The major nodded. “All right. But how do we trigger the switch from up here?”
“We’d have to hit it. Like I said, we can crash.” The engineer avoided the major’s eyes. “Isoke and I had this idea once that if we had to, if we really had to, we could release the gas bag while we were in the air and safely crash-land the Halcyon using just the propellers and the stabilizers to control the descent. That’s why we’ve got such long fins on the gondola. It would be a controlled crash. I mean, controlled enough to survive it.”
“Is that possible?”
Ghanima glanced at Taziri, and then at the major. “Maybe.”
“Maybe?” Syfax frowned.
Taziri swallowed and added, “Plus, it might cause a bit of chaos to have an airship falling out of the sky and crashing into the Star of Orossa. The guards may be able to tackle Chaou, or at least get the queen to safety in all the excitement.” Excitement? I’m plotting my own death, and Yuba will never know what really happened to me. He’ll hear some official statement. My little girl will grow up thinking…what?
The major stared down at her. “If you think you can do it, then do it.”
Taziri touched Ghanima’s shoulder and pointed at the controls. “It’ll be safer for you and the major in the back of the cabin.”
Ghanima shook her head. “Your eyes are lousy, old-timer. I’ll do it.”
“Old-timer?” She sighed. “All right, let’s do this. Line up our approach and get us pointed at the nose of the barge’s gondola.”
“One minute.”
Taziri sat staring at her console, only watching the view of the city out of the corner of her eye. She noted how very clean her gauges looked.
“Got it.”
“Now throttle up to full power and try to keep the bow high.” Taziri watched the airspeed needle. “Stand by to release the bag.” The needle edged higher as the wind blasting through the open cockpit grew wilder. “Stand by.” Over the whine and growl of the wind, she heard the soft, almost muffled sound of cannon fire. She reached across her workspace and opened a small panel in the wall, revealing a thin steel handle painted red. The airspeed indicator notched upward, approaching the Halcyon ’s best possible speed. “Ready…releasing…now.” She yanked the handle down.
The fourteen struts connecting the gondola to the gas bag snapped free of their housings with a short metallic screech and Taziri felt her stomach lurch up into her throat as the Halcyon plummeted toward the rocky mountainside. A moment later, an artillery shell exploded above them, followed immediately by the thundering detonation of the gas bag. Billowing waves of fire spread across the sky over head, filling the gondola with a hellish light.
Then the nose dropped and everyone lurched toward the broken windows. The major crashed forward into Ghanima’s seat as the pilot struggled to brace herself against the controls.
Taziri clung to her console. “More power!”
“That’s all we’ve got!”
Taziri scrambled out of her seat and clawed her way across the slanting cabin floor to the engine housing in the back of the gondola. The propellers on either side of her were growling and snarling, but another sound was beginning to overwhelm them: the whistling wind-scream of the falling airship. Taziri ripped the engine panels away and hauled herself up against the metal box where her massive batteries huddled in three rows, daisy-chained together just below the decoy steam engine.
“Damn resistors!”
She tore the main cable off the lead battery with her bare hand and felt ten thousand bees racing under her skin as the connection was broken and the propellers fell eerily silent. Her utility knife was already open in her other hand and she hacked the fat black resistor off the cable and then jammed it back under the battery terminal’s latch. A fiery shower of sparks leapt toward her goggled eyes as the propellers roared back to life and the airship surged forward.
For a moment, they continued to fall with the Halcyon ’s glassless cockpit still pointed at the jagged mountain face. But then the deck leveled out and the view raced upward in a blur of rock and scrub brush until a dozen massive temples and palaces and towers appeared ahead. Taziri dashed back to her seat and squinted through her partially scorched goggles at the airfield. The heavy cannons at the edge of the city were still firing and she could hear the bullets whining past them, but she didn’t hear a single ping against the Halcyon ’s hull.
Taziri focused on the prow of the queen’s skybarge, on the shining cockpit of the Star of Orossa. “A little to port! A little bit more!”
“I’ve got it!”
“Just a little more!”
For a moment, Taziri let her eyes wander a bit to the side and she realized that although they were still falling, it was only at a shallow angle. The Halcyon was screaming along, faster than she had ever flown before, but she was almost level to the ground. Suddenly the view was obscured by a wall of gray as the tiny airship plunged into the Upper City, hurtling over a street through a sculpted canyon of stone and steel. Ahead, the airfield had erupted into chaos. People were running in every direction, some toward the queen but most away from the skybarge. Chaou was nowhere to be seen.
Taziri grabbed Ghanima’s shoulder. “Steady! Steady! You’ve got it!”
“I know! Shut up!”
The Star of Orossa filled their forward view. There was nothing but gas bag and gondola, and the slender strip of grass beneath them.
“You’ve got it!”
“I said I know!”
A dripping icicle of horror suddenly plunged into Taziri’s bowels as the golden airship and the ground thundered up to smash the Halcyon. She wrapped her arms around Ghanima and tried to haul her out of the pilot’s seat, but she slipped and fell to the floor behind the cockpit as they crashed to earth.
The sounds of crunching metal and screaming people rose to such unbearable decibels that all Taziri could hear was a painful screeching white noise as the deck drove into the airfield and everything inside the Halcyon that wasn’t bolted down flew forward. Taziri tumbled up against the back of the pilot’s seat, wrenching her neck and shoulders. Through her narrowed eyes, she watched the engine compartment of her ship tear itself in half as the electric motors and propellers plowed into the ground and ripped the walls of the Halcyon away. The little steam engine popped free without a sound and disappeared into the air and her batteries full of acid and sharp metal plates tumbled out of the stern and rained down on the three human bodies in the cockpit.
And then everything was still.
Taziri slowly lifted her head, then ran her trembling hands over her own body. She discovered a rectangular, acid-soaked plate impaled in her right kidney. For a moment, she could not process the idea of something stabbing through her body, but the moment passed. She grabbed the plate with shaking fingers and eased it out of her flesh. Her world went white, spinning and hazy, nauseated and cold, but only for a second, and with her left hand clamped over her bleeding wound, she sat up.
The first thing she noticed was that she was sitting on the grass looking at the crumpled remains of the Halcyon, which lay half-buried under the crumpled remains of the Star of Orossa. The second thing she noticed was that she was no longer inside her airship. The sun had just peeked over the eastern ridge and was stabbing her eyes through mud-caked goggles. Taziri pulled away her headgear and stared around for a moment, dazed and blinking.
Everything hurt, but the pain in her body was distant and confused, obscured by the pain in her skull. Like a puppet on shredded strings, she stood up and stumbled toward the wreckage, not really seeing the great scar in the earth stretching out behind the Halcyon, not really hearing the voices of the dozens of people around him. Everything was too unreal, too sharp, too bright.