Clementine by Cherie Priest

Author:Cherie Priest [Priest, Cherie]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: SteamPunk, Science-Fiction
ISBN: 9781596063082
Publisher: Subterranean
Published: 2010-09-15T07:00:00+00:00

OUR PLAYERS ARE COMPELLED TO COLLABORATE

8

Hainey swung himself into the captain’s chair and snarled when a hail of bullets struck the windshield—chipping it here and nicking it there, but barely scratching the foot-thick swath of polished glass. He found the thruster pedal and pumped it with his foot while his hand searched all the logical spots for a starter switch. His fingers fumbled across the console, feeling into the nooks and slots where such switches tended to be located, and finally he found a red lever so he pulled it, and the burners fired at top power, and top volume.

Behind the dirigible someone who had been standing too close to the engine mounts screamed and probably died as the craft howled violently to life.

Simeon adjusted himself in the first mate’s chair and reached overhead for the steering and undocking levers; he tested the former and yanked hard on the latter, and somewhere beyond their hearing a hydraulic clasp unfastened and began to retreat into the body of the ship.

Lamar busied himself by bounding back and forth between two secondary crewmen’s chairs, adjusting settings and turning dials, and the captain asked him, “We ready to fly?” to which the engineer said, “As ready as we’re going to get.” And he cast Maria Boyd an anxious glance.

She held her position by the crew quarters door, but her gun was at her side now and she caught him looking at her, she met his stare without a waver. But no one had time to stare, really. On the Valkyrie’s underbelly men were taking kerosene torches to task, trying to find a place to cut where the metal would split enough to do damage. And the hammers were joined by crowbars, and by pipes, and by anything else hard and reckless, and the sound against the hull was like hail.

Maria said, “They really will kill us all, won’t they?”

And Hainey replied without taking his eyes off the console, “Sure enough. They’ll never give you the five minutes you’d need to explain yourself; they’ll pull you out of the bird and pound you flat, just for being inside it in the first place. Now take yourself a seat.”

“Is that an order, Captain?”

He said, “It’s a suggestion you’d be wise to heed. We’ve never flown a bird this big before, and it might get rough.”

“You’re asking me to trust you enough to quit holding you at gunpoint.”

Before Lamar had time to point out that she’d already lowered her weapon, the captain said, “No, I’m asking you to trust that we’re too busy to pay you any attention.”

With the back of his hand, he swiped at three parallel switches and the howling hum of the engines leaped to a keening pitch. “Here we go,” he announced.

Behind him, Maria slipped into a seat beside the nearest glass gun turret and reached over her head, pulling the safety straps across her chest. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” she said.

“Don’t worry about us,” Simeon said to her. He

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