Cherie Priest - Fiddlehead

“If we can get them to talk to us. Or listen to us. Hey, do you think Troost got through to the base?”

“If he did, the cargo ship’s not evidence of it. That cruiser’s going toward Atlanta, not flying out of it at top speed searching for a doomsday weapon.”

“Good point.”

“Thank you. I want to believe in your friend Troost, I really do; I find shady men to be the most effective, as often as not. But he’s right about the wires. The lines between North and South are feeble enough when the weather is good and the troops are clear. We don’t dare assume that Haymes’s agents haven’t performed some deliberate act of sabotage to keep the information out of military hands until it’s too late. Besides, the taps are only as reliable as the people who man them. No”—she shook her head—“we have to assume that reinforcements aren’t coming. If they do, we can be pleasantly surprised. By the way, I think the ship has stopped—we seem to be catching up to it.”

Henry squinted hard against the sky, and against the wind that warped around the glass screen meant to keep it out. “Yes, you’re right. Have they landed or dropped anchor yet? I can’t tell if they’re moving.”

Past the spyglass, she observed, “No, but they’re settling down now.”

“Right on the road?”

“Get us closer and I’ll be able to tell you.”

She eyed the damaged thruster and wondered if they’d move faster if it worked better, but as far as she could tell, it mostly just caused the craft to pull to the left. Her impatience was matched only by the chill she felt—or could no longer feel, depending on which extremity she considered. If she had toes, she couldn’t prove it by wiggling them, and it was a good thing that the shooting had happened before her fingers had lost all sensation through her gloves. Bending and unbending them was a Herculean exercise in the cold weather, and she had to be quite careful indeed with the spyglass, for the bare metal burned against her skin, even after her bosomly attempts to warm it.

The wind was unrelenting, and so was the spitting, driving rain that came from every direction at once as they tracked the cargo craft through the lowest clouds. “We’ll overtake them in a few minutes,” she said, through chattering teeth. “But what happens then? Do you think they saw us fight with the other craft?”

He was silent. “I don’t know.”

Maria mulled over the possibilities. “If they’re Confederate soldiers, I must believe they would’ve turned around to assist us. We were a legally marked civilian craft, menaced by an unmarked crew that could’ve been piratical, as far as anyone knew. They would’ve turned around,” she said again, more confidently this time.

“Because you waved at them? And they waved back?”

“Because it’s their job to guard the skies over the South, and protect its travelers from harm during wartime,” she protested—though privately she believed that, yes, good Southern boys would’ve hightailed it back to prove their chivalry, given half a chance to do so. “But they didn’t. They didn’t even stick around to watch. They just kept flying.”

“So perhaps they didn’t give a damn what became of us and went on their merry way, leaving the other ship behind to deal with a couple of maniacs out for a flight. You said they weren’t armed.”

“Didn’t appear to be, no. But,” she added quickly, “I might’ve been wrong. Do you think they’d gone far enough to miss the fireball?”

He shrugged. “Far enough that they wouldn’t have heard it inside the cabin. If they weren’t looking behind them, they might not’ve seen it. I don’t know, and I still don’t know what side they’re on. But we’re coming up on them fast, so tell me what you see.”

“I see…” She held the spyglass a fraction away from her cheek. “There’s something in the road. A … a caravan of some sort! Henry, this might be them!”

“If the cargo ship is hanging around it, then that’s probably a good sign. Or a bad one,” he said. If his lips weren’t turning blue, they might’ve been set in a grim, uncertain line.

Under her breath she asked, “But are they stopping the caravan to investigate it, or help it?” Through the spyglass, she couldn’t quite tell.

“Another five minutes and we’ll be on top of them.” Henry said it like a warning.

“Or…”

“Or what?”

The big ship stopped its slow descent and began to rise again. It pivoted to face them.

It was Maria’s turn to issue a warning: “Or maybe they’ll be on top of us. ”

“Shit.”

While she still had a spare moment to do so, she turned the spyglass to the ground and did a hasty estimation of the caravan. As fast as she could count, she called it out. “Eight horses drawing four carts. Maybe thirty men, all uniformed. One rolling-crawler, the Texian kind, but bigger than the ones you usually see. They’ve stopped. They’re hailing the cargo runner, like they aren’t sure why it’s rising again. The ship is there as friend, not foe. Henry, set us down. ”

“Where?”

“Anywhere, but set us down now. Set us down!” she hollered at him, her throat too frozen to manage the shriek she would’ve liked to deliver.

“I’m … I’ll try! What do you see?”

She saw a hatch ratcheting down from the ship’s underside, a bulbous protrusion descending from the hull. She’d never seen a turret that could be retracted inside the belly of a ship before; only the ones that were affixed and unmoving, that would leave anyone who sat inside them exposed to enemy fire.

“A ball turret,” she breathed. “With one of the biggest guns I’ve ever—”

The cargo vessel’s gun fired, kicking out a round of such power that the ship rocked gently as it sent the shell careening through the sky, covering the space between them in one, two, three seconds.

In one, two, three seconds Henry managed to swerve to the right. It was only a tiny, insufficient angle out of the way, except it meant that when the shell struck them head-on it didn’t go straight through their windscreen and kill them both. Instead it crashed beneath their feet, cutting through the engine and out the top of the chassis.

The Black Dove balked violently, shaking almost in a full circle, sending them closer to upside down than Maria had ever been in her life. If she’d eaten anything at all that day she would’ve lost it in the clouds. But the hemp belt held her inside the small cabin, if not in the seat—she hovered above it, and then her backside slammed down again, jarring her whole body. Her head knocked against Henry’s shoulder, and his knees crashed against the underside of the controls.

He fought to find the levers, wrestled with the engine, and lost.

Black, billowing smoke coughed upward and the motor went utterly silent.

The world froze.

The sky was cold, clear, and unmoving, and the ground below was sharp and distant, miles and miles away—or so it looked. And so it felt, until the end of that moment, when the Black Dove pitched forward, dragged by the weight of its dead motor, and began to fall.

Henry cranked viciously at the controls, jerking the clutch and receiving no response. Nothing. Not a cough or a sputter. Not a spark of electricity. Not even smoke. All of it was gone. The little craft sailed, gliding only at a tiny angle, aimed for the ground.

“Henry!” Maria screamed.

He reached over his shoulder and into the tiny back cargo space and pulled out a pack. “There’s just the one!” he screamed back as he wrestled his arms into a pair of straps.

“One what ?”

“Of these. Come here—I’m undoing the belt!”