Zoe Archer - [Ether Chronicles 03] (30 page)

“Kali!” Fletcher called sharply from the pilot’s house. Running back to him, her breath came fast and quick. The time had arrived.

“There.” He pointed at a spot on the ground, about a mile ahead on one of the rocky inlets.

For a moment, she saw nothing. And then—something flashed on the ground. Again. And again. Forming a pattern.

“It looks like a mirror using sunlight to make a signal,” she murmured.

“A distress signal,” he said grimly. “In naval code.”

“Mayhew?”

Fletcher gave a clipped nod. “He’s laying a trap for Redmond. Whatever airship Mayhew procured, it won’t be enough against the
Demeter
. So he’ll bring Redmond down to him and attack him on the ground.”

Kali shivered, but not from the cold. She squinted at the sky. “I don’t see Redmond. No reinforcements, then.”

“Going into this fight, I figured we’d be on our own.” Fletcher’s voice was stony. “Nothing’s changed.”

They talked quickly of their strategy. It wouldn’t be long before Mayhew spotted them, if he hadn’t already, and there wouldn’t be time in the heat of the fight to discuss tactics.

With their plan settled, Fletcher hauled her against him and kissed her, hard and quick. She refused to cling when he broke the kiss, though part of her wanted to hold tight and not let go. Instead, she took a step back. And then another.

“Fletcher—” She could assemble the most complex clockwork device, but not the words she so desperately wanted to say. All she could manage was, “Fly well.”

Inwardly, she winced.
Coward.
But she also knew that it would be disastrous to tell him how she felt in the moments leading up to battle. No use clouding their minds or hearts. Not with their lives—and the lives of Redmond and other Man O’ Wars—at stake.

“Good shooting,” he answered, but there was something in his voice, something raw that told her he understood, felt the same.

She spun away and ran for the ether cannon.

F
letcher’s pulse hammered as he brought the ship closer to Mayhew’s position. The blade-sharp calm he usually felt before a battle was nowhere to be found, and he knew exactly why: Kali. The welfare of his crew always concerned him—putting them in the line of fire wasn’t an easy decision, but he’d done so when duty required it, and with the knowledge that his men fully expected to be in combat, and maybe even lose their lives in service to their country.

But he’d never loved any of his crew. The beat of his heart and the breath in his lungs didn’t depend on them.

If anything happened to her . . .

He shoved the thought from his mind. Battles weren’t won on fear. If that calm wouldn’t come to him on its own, he’d force it on himself.

So he focused on the landscape. Mayhew had set his ship down between two peaks, giving him protection, but the pinnacles also offered a small vessel like the
Persephone
an excellent means of easing close without being seen. Fletcher brought his airship low and stole toward Mayhew’s position. He skirted around the base of one crag, keeping the ship close to the mountain. From her position at the rail by the ether cannon, Kali could have reached out and brushed the tips of her fingers against the rocks. But she was wise and kept her hands safe.

There was a notch between the two peaks, just wide enough to accommodate the
Persephone
. Mayhew would be looking to the north, his attention fixed on the sky, giving Fletcher a small, brief advantage. He and Kali would have only a few moments of surprise before Mayhew turned his own weapons on them.

Fletcher slipped the
Persephone
through the narrow opening, his movements at the wheel precise. There, just ahead, was Mayhew’s ship. It was the same one he’d used to reach Eilean Comhachag, but he’d modified it, transforming it from a seafaring vessel to an airship using scavenged and assembled parts to make ether tanks and turbines. Parts likely taken from naval ships.

Vessel and man, both altered. Fletcher almost admired Mayhew’s ingenuity. Almost.

The distress signal continued to flash from the deck— one of Mayhew’s henchmen was using a large mirror to transmit the false danger, clearly coached ahead of time by the lieutenant. The other thug, Robbins, stood ready beside an ether cannon. And lurking behind them was Mayhew. Fletcher only recognized the lieutenant by his hair color. But his size and form had changed, grown bulky and large.

There wasn’t time to get a closer look at Mayhew’s transformation. Instead, Fletcher brought the
Persephone
in at an angle, giving Kali a clear shot with the ether cannon.

She knew her cue. Without hesitating, Kali fired on Mayhew’s ship. The ether-powered shot slammed into the deck, punching a massive hole in the planks. Grady, the thug holding the mirror, was flung to the side, the mirror he held shattering. Mayhew was also thrown back from the force of the blast, but he got right to his feet. The lieutenant ran to his own ether Gatling gun. He unloaded a barrage of fire. The high-powered bullets riddled the
Persephone
’s hull in fast succession.

Kali dove for cover, and Fletcher remembered to breathe only when she stood up, unhurt save for scratches.

Fletcher brought the airship around, making sure that Kali could keep up the cannon fire against Mayhew. But the
Persephone
quaked from the force of the enemy’s ether cannon. Fletcher managed to steer the ship so she didn’t take the full brunt of the shot, protecting the ether tanks and the turbines. But one of the lower decks suffered the blow, with a wound torn in the hull. He winced. Patched together as she was, the ship couldn’t take many hits before turning to a rain of splinters and scrap.

Kali fired the ether cannon again. A huge explosion shook the air as her shot hit the enemy’s cannon. The weapon erupted in a massive ball of flame, engulfing the thug manning it.

For a moment, Kali’s hands fell away from the cannon. She stepped back. Fletcher couldn’t see her face, but he knew the posture of a person in shock. He knew her thoughts: she’d never killed a man before. She was a builder, a creator. And she’d taken someone’s life.

God, if only he could leave this bloody pilot’s house and go to her. Comfort her.

Yet someone had to pilot the ship. Had to make sure they survived. And they needed someone manning the weapons. Otherwise, they had no defense against Mayhew.

Fletcher started to steer the
Persephone
into retreat. They’d have to find another way to fight Mayhew, or hope that Redmond would notice the battle and keep clear. But then there came the distinctive boom of an ether cannon. The
Persephone
’s ether cannon.

Kali was back at her post.

S
he wanted to vomit. Kali’s hands shook—hell, everything in her body shook. She could hardly believe what she’d done. With one pull of the rope attached to the cannon’s firing lever, she’d erased one human’s existence. After seeing thousands killed in Liverpool, now she was the killer.

But they had been civilians. Innocents. They’d posed no threat. The man she’d just killed had wanted her, and many more, dead. There had been no choice, only duty. This was a fight that had to be won.

And her responsibility wasn’t over. She had to keep Redmond and the other Man O’ Wars safe. More important, she had to protect Fletcher. If that meant exterminating a hired gun, then, by all the gods and goddesses, she’d do it.

So she took up her position again, despite the roiling in her belly and her nerves stretched tight enough to break. As more gunfire rang out, memories of Liverpool tried to flood her mind—the sounds of cannons, Gatling guns, rifles, the screams of the wounded and dying. She shook her head, driving the memories away. They were more dangerous than the guns shooting at her now.

Lining her eye with the sight of the ether cannon, she took a breath. Another. Then aimed and fired. More of Mayhew’s ship blew apart, but the lieutenant and Grady continued to shoot back, riddling the
Persephone
with cannon and gunfire. Their little airship was turning to pulp.

She lined up Mayhew in the cannon’s sight, but just as she fired, he leapt out of the way.

She ran to the pilot house. Before Fletcher could speak, she yelled above the din. “We’re out of ammunition for the cannon. You’ll have to bring us about so I can use the Gatling gun.”

He shook his head. “Any more hits, and the
Persephone
’s destroyed. I’m taking her down.”

“But . . . how will we fight him?”

He pressed an ether pistol into her grip. “With that.” Then he briefly took his hands off the wheel and held them up. “And with these.”

I
t wouldn’t be an easy landing. There wasn’t time.

“Brace yourself,” Fletcher advised Kali. “Tight.”

Heart thudding in her throat, she did as he suggested, wedging her shoulder tight into the front corner of the pilot house and gripping the rail that ran along the wall. But Fletcher stayed at the wheel. “What about you?”

His mouth hitched into a rueful half-smile. “Survived one airship crash. And I’ve got no objective to die in this one.” He banked the ship sharply, taking her out over the water for his approach.

She ignored the pitching of her stomach. “You’d better not. I’m not keen to face Mayhew on my own.” Better to hide behind bravado than face her real fear—losing Fletcher.

His smile faded, his gaze turning grave. “Not a possibility. Now get ready.”

Glancing out the window of the pilot house, she saw the ground approaching at an alarming rate. It grew closer and closer, Fletcher pulling hard on the wheel to keep the airship level, and cutting power to the engines. She screwed her eyes shut. And then—

Her arms screamed with the effort to keep herself upright, her body banging hard into the wall, as the
Persephone
hit the ground. The ship slid for what felt like hundreds of yards over rocky terrain, bouncing as it skidded. She pried her eyes open to see Fletcher, his legs wide as he fought to stay upright, the muscles of his thighs straining from the effort. Teeth bared, he let out a groan as he battled to slow the ship. If the
Persephone
didn’t stop soon, they’d plow right into the side of a mountain.

With a judder, the ship finally came to rest. Twenty feet away from the mountain.

Kali exhaled. It took several tries for her to release her death’s grip on the railing.

Fletcher was instantly in front of her, hands on her shoulders. “All right?” he demanded.

“I’ll have some pretty bruises tomorrow,” she managed, “but nothing’s broken. You?”

His mouth curled cruelly. “Ready to send Mayhew to hell.”

She pulled the pistol from her belt. “Right behind you.”

He wanted to order her to stay with the ship—she could see it in the set of his jaw—but said nothing. Only nodded, once. “Stay low, and don’t take chances.”

Now it was her time to smile. “My life is predicated on taking chances. There’s no need to change that policy now.”

He stared at her for a moment, his gaze fierce. “The hell with it,” he muttered to himself. Then, louder, “Kali, I—”

Gunfire from an ether rifle pierced the back wall of the pilot house and shattered the window. Kali and Fletcher flung themselves to the floor as wood and broken glass rained down on them.

They shared a look, and then ran right into the teeth of battle.1

B
ullets whined past Kali and Fletcher as they sped in a zigzag pattern toward Mayhew’s ship. The ground exploded around them in a hail of rocks and hard-packed soil. She kept in a low crouch as she ran, grateful that she’d spent so much time on the island strengthening her legs and coordination—otherwise, she would’ve been a stumbling, panting disaster. A perfect target.

As she and Fletcher neared the ship, she saw that it didn’t actually rest on the ground, as the
Persephone
could. The lieutenant’s modified airship was originally a large fishing trawler. Its curved keel hovered inches above the ground. She also noted with satisfaction that a considerable portion of the ship’s fifty-foot length had been heavily damaged by her ether cannon.

But there wasn’t time to admire her handiwork. They reached the ship and pressed flat against its hull, positioning themselves so that Mayhew and Grady’s gunfire couldn’t reach them.

Fletcher eyed the rail above. It was a good twenty feet from the ground to the edge of the ship, a distance they both knew proved little obstacle to him, but not to her.

“Give me a boost,” she said. “Then you follow.”

“Not sending you up there first,” he growled.

“And I’m not staying down here.”

He cursed. Finally, “There’s a hawser by the starboard bow. I go up, then throw the line to you.”

“I’ll be waiting.”

He gave her one last, searing look. Then turned, coiled his body, and leapt with the power and grace of a tiger. It didn’t matter how many times she’d watched him do this, the sight always made her breath catch, even now was no exception. He disappeared over the rail, and from the shouts and swearing that greeted him, he made his landing easily. More shots rang out. Her heart stuttered. But the gunfire didn’t stop, and neither did the sounds of heavy objects being broken. A battle.

That meant he was alive and fighting.

She ran around the perimeter of the ship, heading toward the starboard bow. The ground in front of her shattered from an ether-powered bullet. She threw her arm up to shield herself, but not before gravel scratched across her face. At least she still wore her goggles, protecting her eyes. But she felt the drip of blood down her cheek.

Fear rose up, and memories of Liverpool choked her.

Later. I’ll let myself be afraid later.
Now there was only the fight.

Reaching the starboard bow, she waited, huddling beneath the prow to protect herself from gunfire. She could hear more sounds of combat above. Maybe Fletcher wouldn’t get the chance to throw her the line. Maybe he’d decide to leave her on the ground and take on Mayhew and the henchman on his own. She didn’t like either option.