K. Weiland - Storming

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.