“Better hurry, boy,” Old Graf said as Gavin pulled the helmet off. “He won’t appreciate it if you’re slow.”
Gavin shoved his fiddle into its case and ran for it. He skittered down the ladder to the main deck, which swarmed with activity. Airmen boiled out of the hatchways, rushing to ready the ship for battle. Ports flipped open along the hull, exposing flechette and harpoon guns. Men in white and gray leather manned the pumps that forced ballast air out of certain ballonets inside the Juniper’s envelope and inflated other ballonets with more hydrogen, allowing the ship to rise. Other men swarmed into the netting, climbing toward the envelope with compressed air pistols and cutlasses of tempered glass-only a fool used gunpowder or sparking steel near several tons of explosive hydrogen.
Gavin ran to the center of the deck and slid down the rails of another ladder polished by years of use, pausing only to drop his fiddle off in the crew quarters, where he stuffed it under a blanket and prayed no pirate would find it. Then he ran back to the ladder.
The Juniper was an American ship of American design. A web of wrist-thick ropes hung from an enormous, cigar-shaped envelope of gas and cradled what looked like a sailing ship with the masts removed. Fastened to the bottom of the ship and looking a bit like a glass bubble with a wooden bottom was the navigation gondola, where Pilot and the captain spent most of their time. Gavin dropped past two decks and out the bottom of the ship into the gondola.
The floor was solid wood, but the sides of the gondola were made of glass to give a good view in all directions, and now Gavin could see the gliders skimming ominously toward the Juniper. Speaking tubes sprouted from every cranny, and pigeonholes held rolled-up charts and instruments. Captain Naismith stood at the helm, his fingers white on the wheel spokes and his plain features tense. His dark blue captain’s coat with its gold buttons and epaulets rustled not at all, and his hair remained hidden beneath his cap. Captain Naismith was a young man, not yet thirty, and he dealt with the grumblings of the much older men put under his command by expecting strict discipline from everyone, including himself.
Beside him stood Pilot. Gavin had never learned his name-the pilot of an airship was always just called Pilot. He was perhaps forty, with a shock of wheat blond hair. At the moment, he was bent over a tableful of charts, his sextant clutched in one hand.
“Sir,” Gavin said.
“Master Ennock,” Captain Naismith said, “you were thirteen years old the last time we were attacked by privateers.”
“Fourteen, sir. Two days after my birthday.”
He waved this aside. “You wanted to fight, but I ordered you to hide in the cargo hold.”
Gavin nodded. That had been a dreadful day. He remembered crouching among the crates and barrels with the rats, hearing thumps and screams and other noises he couldn’t identify. Part of him wanted to help, and part of him was glad for the captain’s order. The Juniper’s crew had managed to beat the pirates off and escape, but there had still been blood to scrub off the deck afterward, and Gavin had accidentally stepped on a severed hand that rolled beneath his boot. Only Old Graf had seen him throw up over the side.
“Only full airmen carry weapons,” Captain Naismith continued, “but today we have special circumstances. Old Graf’s been teaching you, hasn’t he?”
“Yes, sir.” Gavin’s heart was pounding now.
“Take what you need from the arms master and get up in the netting. Defend my ship, Master Ennock. She’s only a merchant vessel, but she’s all we have.”
“Sir!” And Gavin rushed up the ladder. He found the arms master belowdecks, and the man handed him a tempered glass cutlass and a heavy brass pistol that fired glass flechettes using compressed air. On the main deck, Gavin could see the gliders were less than a hundred yards away, and in the distance coasted the ominous shape of a pirate airship, emerging from the clouds like a killer whale rising from an ocean trench. Although the Juniper was gaining altitude, leaving the ocean far below, the pirate ship was matching them. The gliders drew nearer. Each held a pirate suspended beneath a wide wing of oiled silk on a light frame painted blue. A bottle of compressed air fizzled behind each one, propelling it forward. The bottle didn’t have enough propulsion in it for a return trip. It wasn’t meant to.
“Fire!” shouted First Mate Lightman.
A hiss snaked through the air, followed by a pop. Four of the side guns spat a barrage of deadly metal darts. Two of the gliders evaporated in a cloud of blood and silk. The wing on one of the others was clipped, and it spiraled out of sight, the pirate’s shouts of terror thinning away as it went. Gavin grabbed some of the heavy netting, climbing upward and outward, nimble as a monkey.
The netting comprised heavy rope tied in foot-wide squares that slanted outward like a giant V, with the narrow ship in the bottom and the wide envelope at the top. Halfway up the netting were gaps and wooden platforms that allowed the airmen to work on both sides of the netting as needed, and these were the gliders’ targets-the pirates could slip through the gaps, drop down the inside, and land on the deck to attack the crew.
“Fire!” The big guns hissed once more below.
Gavin skittered farther up the slanted ropes. Here he felt at home, with nothing but free-flowing air rushing above and below him. He felt every creak and sway of the ship as if the ropes were his own tendons, the envelope his lungs, the deck his body. He loved this place, this ship. And now the Juniper was under attack.
He was out of the envelope’s shadow, and the sun glared down from a clear sky while the damp wind pushed steadily from his left. He reached one of the gaps and perched on the heavy horizontal rope at the top. On the outer hull below whirled the propellers on their engine nacelles, and farther below that, blue ocean filled the horizon. Other airmen were taking up positions in other gaps and on various platforms, while the gliders closed in.
A guy rope was tied to the netting. Gavin flicked it free but lost his grip on it. Another hand snatched the rope before the wind could swing it away. Airman Tom Danforth grinned at Gavin through a great deal of dark hair, and his brown eyes sparkled with excitement as he tossed the guy rope to Gavin. The captain had promoted Tom from cabin boy to airman only a few months ago on his eighteenth birthday, but his and Gavin’s friendship had survived the change in rank. Gavin sometimes envied seagoing cabin boys, who often became full sailors long before they turned eighteen, but the feeling never lasted long-he couldn’t imagine being stranded on Earth forever, an eternal prisoner of gravity.
“Ready for this?” Tom asked.
Gavin tried to wet his lips but had no spit. “Ready as I can be. You scared?”
“Yep.” He gave a nervous smile. “But I’m not going to let them take our ship.”
As if on cue, the flock of gliders rushed silently upward past the gunwale, out of range of the big guns and toward the netting gaps. Still clinging to the netting with one hand, Tom drew his pistol and fired down at them, but the shot went wide. An airman a few yards away-Stanley Barefield-fired more carefully, and one of the pirates went limp. His glider yawed and veered away. The Juniper continued to rise, which meant the gliders appeared to be dropping toward the gunwale. The gliders needed enough altitude to gain the gaps in the netting and land on the deck before their air bottles gave out.
Gavin drew his pistol, fired, and missed. The ship’s guns spoke one more time, but Gavin doubted they did any good. More than two dozen gliders were swarming like wasps around the Juniper now, and the enormous bulk of the privateer airship was less than half a mile away. Its design was similar to the Juniper’s, but its envelope was thinner, built more for speed, and painted blue to blend in with the sky. It was also larger than the Juniper, and no doubt better armed. Air pistols hissed, and glass flechettes zipped through the air. When the pirate ship got close enough, she would send a full force of fighting men to overwhelm the crew and capture the Juniper entirely. Gavin swallowed.