“You killed Tink!” Pan’s eyes were feral, his teeth clenched as he tried to play surgeon with my torso. I caught his knife hand, but he was surprisingly strong. Crazy people usually are. I managed to get my knee up against his chest and shoved him backwards against the railing. As I scrambled for the Mean Ol’ Broad, I felt something punch me in the back of my shoulder. I ignored it and slid for the Broad. By the time I grabbed her and turned, Pan was in the air.
So were the boys. They dangled precariously as Pan’s ship changed course, their eyes wide and haunted. Not one of them made a sound as they were hauled upward by the Twins and Tootles up above. Curly was tethered along with the captives, and flipped me the bird as he dangled.
Pan flew behind the tether lines, knowing that I wouldn’t take the shot with the boys in the way. He glared with crazed eyes. “You’re going down, you bastard! It’s what you deserve for what you did to Tink. You can’t fly, but I can. I’ll be watching you all the way down!” His ship pulled further away as he continued to rain insults and obscenities.
I ignored him as I assessed the situation. The dull throb in my shoulder painfully indicated Pan’s dagger was probably still embedded there. I didn’t bother to check it out. I was already down on my ups, and things weren’t looking to improve anytime soon.
The pilot’s cabin was a few feet away, so I kicked in the door. Sure enough, the pilot was slumped over with blood staining the back of his uniform. The control panel whirred and flickered with ominous warning lights. Underneath the console were the sparking remains of hastily damaged wires.
The view from the window didn’t exactly brighten the mood. The zeppelin slowly took a nosedive, approaching the crisscrossing floaters that whizzed around the brightly lit monolithic buildings below us. Our declining course would take us through several lanes of flying traffic before creating a fireworks show of exploding vehicles and deadly debris.
“Nice,” I muttered. “This is why I hate airships.”
One of the console screens fizzled on, morphing into a holographic image of a woman’s smiling face. “Attention: airship is off course. Disastrous collision imminent.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.” The steering controls swayed without any resistance when I yanked them. Whatever Pan did, maneuvering to any kind of landing was impossible.
“Disastrous collision imminent. Self destruct sequence initiated.” The woman smiled cheerfully as she delivered my death sentence.
“Wait — damn it, there’s people still on board!”
The hologram’s eyes oozed with sympathy. “I apologize. The calculated potential for massive property damage and loss of life upon crashing outweighs the potential losses upon self-destruction. The explosion will be powerful enough to reduce the debris to mostly insignificant pieces, resulting in minor property damage against the heavily shielded buildings and flying vehicles. Calculated fatalities acceptable for litigation parameters. Please exit the airship in two minutes to avoid unnecessary vaporization.”
The countdown ticked off in pulsing red numbers.
“Damn it!” I slammed my fist against the console, which wasn’t good for much besides bruising my hand. There was no logic I could present to persuade the computer to alter its decision, so I had to come up with an alternate solution
Like running down the hall yelling incoherently. Tiger Lily looked up in alarm when I charged toward her.
“Where’s Pan?”
“Gone. And so will we when this crate blows sky high.”
“What?”
“No time.” I glanced at the wounded lug at her feet and bent to yank him up. “On your feet, soldier.” I ignored his anguished moan as I threw his arm over my shoulder.
“Wait, his neck is still bleeding. And is that a knife in your shoulder?”
“We got worse things to worry about. Come on!”
She helped me drag the useless guard toward the door, which was a lot harder than it sounds with the ship pointed the wrong direction. We managed to stagger over, where I slung the guard through the opening. Gravity snatched him toward the nose of the ship, where he struck the railing with a bone-shattering crunch before fluttering helplessly in open space and plummeting toward the flying traffic far below. I didn’t exactly shed any tears for a rotten skel who worked for child slavers.
“What the hell are you thinking?” Tiger Lily’s voice screeched in my ears. That screech morphed into a scream as I hugged her tightly and flung both of us out the door and over the rail. The emergency boosters on the airship fired at that moment, sending it hurtling upward, as it was programmed to do. Exploding at the highest point would scatter the debris further, causing the least amount of damage possible.
Which of course didn’t matter much to us as we plunged downward in free fall. I tried to hang on to her, but the wind ripped us apart as we span and whirred like two grains of dust in a vacuum cleaner. Everything around us blurred. The world was a messy display of streaking lights, hazy vision, and howling winds. I thought I heard Tiger Lily scream, but quickly realized it was me. Falling to your death will do that to even the manliest of men.
I had to count on Transit Control operating like it was supposed to. Air traffic came with a number of ways to die, the most common being falling. That being the case, the city employed floaters called Beanbags that roved in traffic and deployed to catch any hapless person on their way to being street pizza. It was a long way down, so we had that in our favor. And jumpers aren’t exactly uncommon in a city like New Haven, so Transit had a contingency to redirect traffic to avoid suicidal rubes. One person falling is a bit tricky, with only a twenty percent chance of being rescued. Multiple bodies had a better shot because of the tendency to get noticed quicker. The first body might not make it, but the chances of rescue increased for the others. Which was why I made sure to throw the guard out first.
I tried to concentrate on that as I fell past the first lines of diverted floaters. I wondered what the passengers thought as my body plummeted by them. More than likely they were cussing me out for slowing down their commute. Folks in New Haven aren’t exactly known for their sentimentality.
More lanes of traffic shot by, blurry streaks of color and light. The city’s glow brightened, blinding me as I looked for Tiger Lily. I caught sight of her for a second, her limbs flailing as she fell about thirty yards away. A saucer-shaped floater whirred in almost faster than my eyes could follow, catching her gently and whisking her away.
I smiled. At least she made it. Looked like the same couldn’t be said of me. I’d heard that you black out before you hit the ground, but it didn’t look like that was gonna happen. The zeppelin exploded high above the city, casting the sky in tints of red and orange. Remarkably pretty, in spite of everything. The remains shot across the night like shooting stars.
I didn’t bother making a wish.
The wind seemed to die down a bit, but I was pretty sure it was just my body adjusting to death. They say everything calms down right before you bite the big one. I floated like I’d fall forever as sleek, metallic floaters whizzed all around like mechanical insects. The impossibly large buildings of Uptown blurred as I fell past them, giants of glass and steel with crisscrossed bridges that led to still other enormous structures in a maze of commerce and wealth that ignored the plight of one falling man.