05 Dragon Blood: The Blade's Memory (43 page)

“Sardelle,” Tolemek barked down. “We need your help.”

“Coming.” Hoping Eversong would still be pinned when the fortress fell from the air, Sardelle pulled herself out of the hole to join the others. They had to figure out how to get off this flying monstrosity before it was too late.

Chapter 17

If Ridge’s chest hadn’t hurt so much, he would have been grinning, huge battle notwithstanding. Given the overall situation, he shouldn’t have been pleased, especially since he hadn’t yet figured out how he was going to pick up Sardelle, but the mischief he was able to wreak from within the Cofah flier tickled him. Oh, the maneuverability of the craft left much to be desired, but he kept finding it possible to sneak up on the enemy formations. Though he wore a different uniform, he slouched in the cockpit, and his cap and goggles and scarf did not appear any different from what the other side used. After sailing along with the Cofah squadrons, he lit into them, tearing holes into their engines and pounding the backs of their cockpits. When the pilots looked behind to see who was firing on them, he looked behind
him
, as if craning his neck to spot some vile Iskandian. Then he ran off to torment other fliers before they figured out what was happening. It felt like cheating, but this was an attack on his homeland, and he would use any advantage he could find to get rid of these invaders. He took down eight aircraft with his new trick before Jaxi’s voice sounded in his mind.

We need that pickup, or your favorite sword is going to drown.

Kasandral is here?

I’d melt your balls off for that, but I’m too tired.
Jaxi did sound tired. Ridge hadn’t heard that before, and his gut furled into a tense worried knot. Sardelle must have tangled with the sorceress.

Is she all right, Jaxi?

She will be if you get us off this smoking pile of dung in the next thirty seconds.

Thirty seconds? Ridge glanced at the spot on the control panel where there should have been a chronometer, but the Cofah had left out that feature. Cursing, he fumbled in his pocket for his watch, the slight touch to his chest causing a fresh blast of pain. They had four minutes until the scheduled pickup.

Tolemek’s concoction is eating up the dragon blood right now, and Kaika set off a few million bombs too. We don’t
have
four minutes.

Understood. I’ll get the others. Get up on top of one of the back towers so we can see you.

How Ridge would “get the others” without being shot himself remained to be seen. Thus far, he had been avoiding the Iskandian fliers, so they wouldn’t target him by accident. Now, he flew toward the other side of the platform, where Ahn, Pimples, Duck, and Solk had just swept back into view. With the sorceress gone, they had been flying up and shooting the soldiers atop the walls, then ducking back under the platform, so they could come up on the other side. Solk had another two-person flier, so if Ridge could figure out how to tell her to go to the pickup spot, they could successfully get their people out. Unfortunately, Solk and Duck were too distracted to look in his direction.

Wait, Jaxi?
he thought as he veered in their direction to help.
Can you tell Cas to come get you? I’m not able to communicate with the others, right now.

Jaxi did not respond. Ridge feared he had waited too long to remember that she had spoken with some of the others before and presumably could again. She was probably too busy fighting to monitor him constantly.

“Damn,” he whispered, both because he had missed an opportunity and because his people were in trouble.

Eight of the Iskandian fliers were hanging with Ahn, Pimples, Duck, and Solk, shooting indiscriminately. Countless bullets riddled the side of Duck’s craft, and Solk looked to be struggling with her steering. Ridge hoped the enemy squadron would run out of ammo. He also hoped that Ahn had told the others to watch out for a friendly Cofah flier, since he still had no way to communicate with the rest of his squadron.

Ridge would have preferred to go straight in and join his squadron, but that would put him into the line of fire from the fliers chasing them. Instead, he angled in from ahead and to the side of them. Ignoring the pain it stirred, he stood slightly in his cockpit—something nobody else would do, because nobody else should have harnesses that had been cut away. He waved, his fingers curled into the Iskandian pilots’ all right/ready gesture.

Ahn spotted him. She raised a hand toward him, and he pointed upward several times, making his gestures dramatic so she couldn’t miss them. Two of the fliers on their tails had just fired rockets. For the last few minutes, Ridge hadn’t had to worry about those, since they seemed to have a built-in command not to lock onto their own fliers. Solk and Duck didn’t have that luxury.

Ahn and Pimples dove down, probably intending to loop and come up behind their pursuers. Ridge rose up to skim along near the thrusters, hoping the Cofah would pass him without a second glance, but he was already turning to follow those rockets. Solk and Duck were both good, but he wasn’t sure they were good enough—or maybe the term was reckless enough—to perform the moves he had been doing to wreck the rockets. They zigzagged all over the sky to elude them, but he knew from experience that those blood-powered weapons would simply alter course and continue after their targets.

The sleek rockets were faster than fliers, so Ridge struggled to get behind them and put them in the sights of his guns without placing his own people there, as well. One zoomed so close to Solk that Ridge feared for her life. Some instinct warned her to duck in the cockpit and dive down as the rocket skimmed past, nearly knocking her cap from her head.

As it banked to come back toward her, Ridge saw his chance to catch up with it. Wishing for Ahn’s deadly accuracy, he sprayed rounds at it. The slender, fast-moving cylinder did not offer a large target, but at least two of his bullets smacked off it; he was certain of it. The rocket wobbled briefly, then continued on its inexorable path, picking up speed as it chased Solk.

“Up,” Ridge yelled, and pointed at the thrusters, though it was probably futile. She wouldn’t hear him over all of the noise.

He pushed his flier, trying to gain ground again. For an instant, he was behind the rocket and Solk’s flier was not square in front of him. He took a second to aim carefully and shot it in the back. Four directional flaps controlled its path, and he had the satisfaction of knocking one off. He would have preferred if the entire rocket blew up spectacularly, but the damage was enough. With its ability to steer compromised, the rocket sailed off uselessly into the distance.

Ridge searched around for Duck. He glimpsed him flying downward with smoke wafting from his engine. Ridge cursed, both because he didn’t know if that damage was something that Duck would be able to land with and because that stole one more of his people who was supposed to be available for the pickup.

Before he could chase after Duck and check more closely on him, the snarling face of a Cofah pilot bore toward him from the right. Someone had figured out he wasn’t on their side.

Ridge flew up, knowing the pilot wouldn’t be able to correct his path quickly enough to follow. Bullets raked through the air under his flier’s belly. Somehow, he misjudged the air around him, and he almost smacked into a roaring thruster. Confused, he jerked his craft to the side and toward a lower elevation as heat washed over him.

Once again, he did not compensate fully and get himself far enough away from the thrusters. Usually, his spatial orientation was as good as a bird’s, so his first thought was to blame the craft. Then, with the abruptness of a cannon firing, he realized what was happening. The platform was sinking. In seconds, it might be dropping a lot faster.

All thought of helping other pilots and fighting the Cofah fled from his mind. He arrowed straight for the back side of the platform. He had to get Sardelle. He
did
look around as he flew, searching for the others. He needed their help to get his team. They needed to pick up three people, and he didn’t have a rope or another seat.

Ridge did not see anybody except Ahn. He cursed. He glanced toward the dirigibles—only one remained in the sky, thanks to Crash’s team’s work, but if Iskandian fliers were still over there, he couldn’t see them. He certainly couldn’t communicate with them.

As he soared out from underneath the platform, all he could do was hope that Ahn had called for someone else to come over. At least the Cofah fliers were not chasing them anymore. Those pilots also must have realized the platform was sinking and that they had more problems than enemy bullets now.

Ridge spotted Sardelle, Kaika, and Tolemek standing atop a tower and waving. Relief and worry mixed in his throat, making a tight ball he couldn’t swallow around. Having no idea what he intended to do, he soared toward them. Ahn was ahead of him, her rope dangling down from her back seat. At least
one
person would get the ride off that he expected. Could her flier possibly carry the weight of three people instead of two? Ahn was the lightest pilot in the squadron, but neither Kaika nor Tolemek was exactly small.

Ridge?
Sardelle asked into his head.

Changed rides. Long story.

How do we…

My lap
, he thought.
Can Jaxi help you jump?

Uhm.
Sardelle glanced over the side at the ocean far, far below.

Something huge inside the fortress snapped, the noise echoing for miles around. The platform lurched downward to a thirty-degree slope. Kaika caught Sardelle and threw her weight back, and Ridge’s heart nearly flew out through his throat. He couldn’t hover in this cursed bucket, so all he could do was fly around in circles, trying to figure out how he was going to pick up Sardelle.

Since the two-man Iskandian fliers had thrusters, Ahn was able to activate them and drop low enough for the rope to dangle down to the tower. She shouted for Tolemek to get on.

Tolemek waved, but pushed Kaika toward the rope. Kaika hesitated, glancing at Sardelle.

“Hurry,” Ridge yelled, knowing it was useless, but if that fortress tilted further sideways, or simply fell out of the air, he would lose all three of them. And that could
not
happen.

An idea popped into his mind as Kaika leaped and caught Ahn’s rope. Ridge thrust his knee against the stick for a second, yanked out his knife, and cut off a length of what remained of the shoulder harness. He jammed the blade back in its sheath and rushed to tie the strip to the ends of the lap harness he had cut the pilot out of earlier. He tied it so tightly that he would risk stopping the circulation to his legs, but he could worry about that later.

When he finished, he swooped back toward the tower, irritated with how far the craft had flown while he had been cutting and tying. All around him, smoke rose and structures burned. Ahead of him, Sardelle and Tolemek were still on the tower, gripping the crenelated edge to keep from sliding off. Ahn was waving down to Tolemek, urging him to come up, even as Kaika climbed into the back seat.

Tolemek shook his head, pointed, and yelled something. With his fancy scientist mind, he had probably more accurately performed the calculation that Ridge had been worrying over earlier. With him
and
Kaika in the back, that craft would be too heavy to fly. An anguished expression contorted Ahn’s face, but she must have seen Ridge turning to come in, for she maneuvered away from the tower top.

Ridge empathized and approved of Tolemek’s selfless choice, but he could only pick up one of them, and there was no way it wasn’t going to be Sardelle. As he swooped down toward the tower, he flipped over, flying upside down toward her.

Stick your arm up, and get ready
, he thought, praying she was listening and praying that his battered body would hold together so he could do this.

Sardelle’s eyes widened, but she did as he ordered, standing as straight as she could on the tilted tower and stretching her arm upward. Hanging upside down, he headed in, lowering his own hand. His brain hurt at the thought of how precise he had to be with his flying to grab her. The harness cut into his lap, and he was all too aware of how little kept him from tumbling out of the craft.

He lined it up for the final approach and reached for her hand. Another tremendous snap sounded from within the fortress. Ridge lunged, afraid the platform would fall lower and that she would drop out of his range, that he would lose her.

The tower
did
tilt farther downward, but Sardelle jumped and clasped his arm as his fingers wrapped around her wrist. The extra weight suddenly hanging from his body sent such intense pain through Ridge that he almost lost her.

He gritted his teeth, black dots darting through his vision, as the flier engine groaned, and he lost altitude. Fortunately, he was already past the tower, and there was nothing but five thousand feet of air between him and the sea. As slowly as he could, he rotated the craft back to upright. As he did, he pulled Sardelle into the cockpit with him, panting to try and control the pain. As a fresh torment, her sword scabbard jammed against his crotch—Jaxi perhaps making up for not being able to melt his balls earlier. But he had Sardelle. That was all that mattered. He pulled her close with one arm and guided the flier away from the fortress with the other. Sardelle gripped his shoulders so tightly, they would probably fall off when he landed, along with his legs and his ribs, but he wouldn’t have it any other way.

Ridge was half-tempted to ask her if she could heal him while they were in such awkward positions, but he had left Tolemek up there, so he couldn’t relax yet. He searched the sky, still hoping one of the other fliers in the squadron would realize someone needed help and sail over. Ridge’s own craft was sinking slightly, and he knew he had to go straight down and land before his engine overheated. This flier was not designed to carry two any more than Ahn’s could carry three.

“Look,” Sardelle said, gazing behind Ridge’s head.

He craned his neck and spotted two things: Crash’s two-man flier had come out from behind the dirigible and was arrowing toward the platform, and something else much larger than his craft was also arrowing toward the platform.