Aetherial Annihilation (24 page)

He sighed and nodded. The pilot sat at the controls and held down two buttons. I heard what sounded like air hissing out of a leaky balloon. Alarm bells went off in my head. The pilot saw my face, and fear shone in his eyes.

"Up!" he said, and pointed up.

"First thing I do when I get an internet connection is research how to fly one of these things." I looked out the window and saw with relief that we were indeed ascending. I pointed to the glowing lights on the crest. "Go."

He gulped and nodded. I then realized the giant lamp on the bottom of the cockpit might give us away. After all, I didn't see any other blimps illuminating the top of the mountain. Thankfully, a black button next to the illustration of a light bulb told me all I needed to know. I pressed it and heard a clicking hum. The light beneath us went out. I hoped extinguishing the lamp didn't raise more of a red flag than leaving it on, but it was too late to change my mind.

"Now all I have to do is lift a huge slab of steel." That was going to be quite a trick. The blimp was big, but I didn't think it had a chance of budging something so heavy. I went to the cabinet the pilot had tried to open just in case he had another gun. When I opened it, I found a tablet computer.

That's not what I was expecting.

Had he planned to wallop me on the side of the head? I pulled out the tablet and found a slick silvery gun beneath it. It looked like something out of a science fiction movie. I took it out and examined it. I wasn't a gun expert, but it didn't seem to have a clip or a place to hold bullets. I turned on the tablet and nearly dropped it when text appeared on the screen.

It's in English!

It offered instructions in English, and several other languages. I chose my native tongue and activated an introductory video. I glanced at the pilot to make sure he was still doing as instructed. He gave me a nervous glance and turned back around. The mountain slowly drew closer.

"Congratulations on your purchase of the Model Four nuclear dirigible," said a peppy female voice. "Although it looks like an ordinary airship on the outside, you'll find that it's anything but ordinary."

A nuclear dirigible?

I hadn't kept up with nom technology over the past year or so, but I knew for certain airships were more of a novelty than an actual form of travel, and there was no way most sane countries would allow something nuclear powered to fly over their cities.

The video assuaged my concerns in the next sentence. "Unlike nuclear fission, this reactor uses cold fusion to create abundant, safe energy. Although standard airship controls are available to disguise the true nature of this vehicle, you can easily switch to nuclear power by twisting the decorative sundial on the bulkhead. This will enable the advanced controls."

The video went on to demonstrate how to deploy weaponry, towing hooks, and a number of other things I'd never heard of on an airship. I knew enough about North Korea to realize there was no way they'd developed this thing on their own. In fact, no nation I knew of possessed such technology. It could have only come from one place. The robots we'd encountered only solidified my suspicions.

Science Academy.

I immediately thought of Victus. But why would he want to help the North Koreans capture me? The minute I returned home, I planned to find out who sent in the tip about this location. First, I had to make this tub work to my advantage.

The pilot shouted something and I glanced up at him. He pointed frantically behind us. When I turned, I saw three airships gliding up the mountain, their huge lamps illuminating the ground beneath them. Either they were onto us, or they were returning to search the slope since they hadn't found me. The blinking lights on the closest one revealed a transformation underway. Large wings extended from the sides and the silhouette of a turret rose from the top.

They must have twisted the damned sundial.

Things were about to get real nasty real fast.

I raced to the sundial and twisted it. A loud thrum vibrated through the cockpit and a light on the ceiling flashed. The top of the cabinet next to the radio station slid aside to reveal a monitor and joystick rising from inside.

The pilot screamed, pointing to the control panel in front of him. The normal controls were in the process of flipping upside down while a more advanced touchscreen rotated into place. Apparently, we were dead in the water while the airship transformed.

"Shut up!" I shouted. A conniption fit wasn't going to solve anything.

"Ablative armor activated," said a pleasant female voice. She repeated the message in various languages while transparent covers slid up to cover the windows, including the one I'd broken to gain entrance.

The monitor finally flickered on revealing a green-tinted night vision view of the area ahead with a white reticle in the center. To the upper right, an outline of the airship highlighted its various components in green.

I didn't have time to read the instructions, relying instead on my video game knowledge, and twisted the joystick. The view rotated to the right. I centered the reticle on the closest airship and hit the red trigger on the joystick.

A brilliant beam lanced through the air and splashed off the airship. The target fired back. I threw up my hands as the laser hit the hull. The temperature in the cockpit rose several degrees and sweat trickled into my eyes. A section of the hull outline on the monitor changed from green to yellow.

I pulled the trigger again, but a red X appeared in the reticle right next to a timer counting down from six seconds.

It's got a cooldown.

That might be good for us. The airships seemed capable of taking a beating, but how many direct hits could we take? If we had several seconds between each blast, it might give us time to get over the mountain ridge.

A loud click, like something latching into place vibrated the floor beneath my feet. The pilot spoke in a relieved voice and ran his fingers up the touchscreen controls. Turbines whined and the airship lurched forward. We finally reached the mountain. A massive laser beam exploded on the rocky slope to our right. Trees burst into flame and boulders tumbled into the forest.

I zoomed in on the closest airship. Just behind and to its right I spotted two more of them fully transformed and plowing ahead at full speed. Destroying just one of them seemed impossible. Forget knocking three of them out of the sky. I sought weakness in the airship design but came up with zilch.

Sweat drizzled into my eyes. The laser blast turned the cockpit into an oven, though it wasn't hot enough to kill anyone. Already, the heat was dissipating, thanks to whatever armor protected this thing.

I'm going to make them sweat.

Finger on the trigger, I stopped as an idea occurred to me. The armor dissipated the brunt of the heat, but what if I hit something particularly heat sensitive? I focused on the large jet turbine beneath the right wing of the closest enemy. A jet engine put off a lot of heat, but like any engine, it didn't work well past its tolerance level.

I locked on and fired. The laser struck the engine, but did no obvious damage.

"C'mon," I said. "Overheat."

The seconds on the monitor ticked down as the laser recharged. The airship fired on us. The beam splashed over the hull, and the temperature shot up again. The pilot gasped and gripped his throat. It occurred to me that the heat didn't bother me nearly as much as it did him. I jerked open a small refrigerator and took out a water bottle then opened it and gave it to the pilot. He poured some over his head and guzzled the rest.

The weapons console beeped. The laser was ready again. I wasted no time firing on the enemy airship's engine once again. Still nothing happened.

The other two airships were nearly even with their leader. In seconds, they'd open fire. Armor or not, the pilot and I would be cooked alive.

The jet turbine on the lead airship sparked. The vessel listed sharply to the right and plowed into the wing of the neighboring dirigible. Like dominoes, the middle airship collided with the third ship and they careened off to the right, the crippled vessel pushing them.

I pumped my fist. "We did it!"

The pilot gave me a frightened look—one that turned to relief when he spotted the crippled airships behind us.

I ran to the front and looked down. I spotted the bright lamps next to the crystoid and pointed toward it. "Hover," I said and hovered one hand over the other. This game of charades meant life or death, especially if the enemy airships recovered and came for us. I repeated my gestures and instructions, and the pilot seemed to get it.

Now I just had to figure out how to deploy the grappling hook on this thing. I went back to the weapons station, figuring the answer had to be nearby. A down arrow on the touchscreen seemed to provide the answer I needed. I pressed it. The turret view strafed to the side and suddenly, the monitor displayed the ground.

The down arrow hadn't activated a grappling hook—it had rotated the turret to the bottom of the nacelle. I pressed another icon beneath the arrow. The green-tinted night vision vanished, replaced by what looked like infrared. I was about to curse my inability to find the right button when I saw a cluster of human-shaped heat signatures hiding behind the nearby boulders.

Dozens of soldiers stood between me and my destination.

Chapter 20

I couldn't afford to be gentle with these people—not if I planned to survive. Killing was not something I enjoyed, but sometimes it was necessary.

I wrapped my hand around the joystick, aimed, and pulled the trigger.

The nearby boulders exploded into chunks of molten rock. Bodies scattered like leaves. I scoped out the cliffs while the laser recharged, and found only one sniper. He seemed to realize the danger and bullets pinged off the hull. The countdown hit zero and I blasted him. The rocky cliff shone bright in the infrared.

Further sweeps of the area revealed no more soldiers, so I inspected the monitor again for a way to grapple the steel. I couldn't find anything. I went back to the pilot and pantomimed what I wanted, holding a hand flat and touching my finger to it like a cable and lifting.

The pilot knew exactly what I wanted. He motioned toward the touchscreen on the copilot's side. I found an icon that looked like a cable and touched it. The monitor flicked to a view of the ground below, displaying a cable with a thick electromagnet on the end. The pilot switched his monitor to a similar view and adjusted our position right over the steel plate. He pointed to another icon shaped like a lightning bolt.

I touched it. The cable snapped taut and the end gripped to the steel plate. The vessel shuddered and groaned with the added weight.

Singing like a piano wire and sounding like it could snap at any moment, the cable vibrated the entire cabin. The pilot pushed forward a lever and finally, the airship gained momentum. Through the monitor, I watched the steel plate slide along the ground and finally uncover the hole.

The pilot shouted a command. I pressed the lightning icon. The cable snapped free of its load and the airship lurched forward before the pilot wrenched it back under control. I watched the massive steel slab rush downhill like a massive guillotine, slicing through trees until it vanished from sight.

Before I could pantomime the next order, the pilot dropped the airship lower until the rugged terrain prevented it from descending any further. He pressed a button and the door on the side sprang open. A rope ladder extended to the ground. He jumped from his seat and said something in an urgent voice, eyes pleading. He pointed out the door and spoke again. I wasn't sure if he was begging me to leave, or asking to come.

I pointed to the unconscious people in the back. He pointed to his injured wrist. I shrugged. He could do what he wanted at this point. The running lights of two airships caught my attention. They must have finally untangled themselves from the crippled vessel. The pilot grunted as he scrambled down the ladder with one hand. I grabbed the unconscious copilot and slid down the ladder, dropped him on the ground, and repeated the process with the radio operator.

Before abandoning ship, I ran to the flight control touchscreen and dragged my fingers up the speed slider, adjusting the speed to max.

The aircraft lurched forward. I blurred to the ladder, slid down it, and hit the ground rolling as the airship thrummed away into the night. Brilliant lasers from the pursuing ships hit it on the wing, but missed the engines. I hoped they'd continue to chase it until a portal opened.

The charred and smoking skeletons of my victims were scattered around the crater amidst the molten and reformed shapes of rock the laser had briefly turned to lava. I looked away from the carnage. The pilot waited for me near the crystoid, eyes brimming with fear. I retrieved the unconscious bodies and dragged them closer to the crater.

"C'mon, Elyssa. Open a portal." I tested my arcphone, but still couldn't get a signal.

The distant sky flashed with more lasers. A huge explosion thundered and bright energy cascaded across the darkness as my faithful airship finally went to the afterlife. With it gone, the pursuit was almost certain to turn back to this area. Even if they believed I'd died in the explosion, someone would notice the missing steel slab.

The radio operator groaned and pushed himself upright. His eyes went wide with confusion, and then with fear when they settled on me. The pilot spoke with him, and the other man began to cry. Was he sad because his airship blew up, or had the pilot told him something else?

If Elyssa didn't open a portal soon, I'd cry too.

The running lights on the enemy dirigibles drew closer. It wouldn't be long before the pursuers were close enough to find us with infrared and blast us all to hell. Unfortunately, there was nowhere else to go unless a gateway appeared. I raced to the impact crater and judged the angle of the aether beam. A jagged boulder a few yards from the crater looked as though it might be in the right spot. I just hoped it was tall enough.