Liberty (Flash Gold, #5) (15 page)

They reached an empty
stretch that lay between them and the navigation cabin, the
structure an island with decking on all sides. Getting to it
without being seen would be a challenge. The smoke lingered, but
men kept running past the cabin. Shouts came from the rear railing.
The gangsters had noticed the approaching ship and were waving
their firearms and pointing in its direction.

Cedar and Kali started
across the open stretch, but they’d taken no more than three steps
before a hatch banged open behind them. Wincing at the noise, Cedar
spun, a revolver already in hand.

Amelia stood in the
hatchway, the wrappings that she usually wore to hide her burn
scars missing, replaced by a bloodstained bandage covering her
head. An open satchel hung from her shoulder, one hand already
dipped into it. Something else was already in her other hand, and
she threw it in his direction. A vial.

Cedar had no idea what
the dark liquid inside of it did, but he shifted his aim and shot
as Kali barked, “Get back!” and tried to pull him away. Despite the
distraction, his aim was true. His bullet blew open the glass vial.
A purplish cloud erupted from it.

As Cedar spun to follow
Kali, certain he didn’t want anything to do with that cloud, he
glimpsed Amelia pulling a mask up over her mouth and nose and also
throwing something with the hand that had been in the satchel. A
metal ball twice the size of Kali’s smoke nuts rolled across the
deck after him.

“Go, go,” Kali was
urging, pulling him and running toward the navigation cabin.

Though he worried about
what the woman had throw after them, he raced after Kali. A feeling
of nausea assailed his stomach. Was that from the smoke?

The ball rolling after
them caught up to Cedar, and he jumped to keep it from striking him
on the heel. It tumbled a few feet farther, then sprang open.

He cursed, expecting
shrapnel or more smoke, but a mechanical creature sprang from
within. It looked like a metal scorpion, and it leaped toward Kali.
Cedar kicked it in the side. It was heavier than he expected—either
that, or it could dig into the wooden deck with those metal claws.
His strike only sent it skidding a foot. Right away, it raced at
her again. Kali danced out of its reach. It spun, trying to jab her
ankle with its tail. Was it as venomous as the real creature? Or
even more so?

Cedar fired at it. His
boot might not have done much, but the bullet was another story.
Dozens of metal pieces flew as the body exploded. A dark blue
smudge remained behind, almost like blood on the deck. Blood or
poison.

“Three more coming,” Kali
whispered.

There was little point in
whispering, since the entire ship had to know they were there,
thanks to his shooting. Indeed, shouts came from both sides of the
deck, men turning from the railings to investigate the interior
threat.

“Trouble on board,”
someone barked.

“The witch’ll get ’em,”
came a reply from the other side of the ship.

With three more of those
balls almost upon them, Cedar couldn’t argue with that statement.
The first unfurled a couple of feet to his side, and another
scorpion sprang out.

He lifted his revolver
toward it as he resumed running toward the navigation doorway,
aware that he was a target for more than Amelia now. He had barely
taken a step before a bullet skipped off the deck behind him.

Kali reached the
navigation door. It was a regular door with a latch, with glass
windows to either side, but judging by the way she pulled without
it budging, the pilot had locked himself inside.

A scorpion skittered
toward Cedar’s boot, that metal stinger waving ominously. More
firearms rang out from the railing. He sprang, half to avoid the
metal creature and half to take partial cover by pressing his back
to the door.

“Can’t open it with you
standing there,” Kali barked, a hammer and chisel in her hand as
she eyed the hinges. She had slung the rifle he’d given her over
her shoulder. Where she’d found the tools, he didn’t know. He
doubted the broom closet had come stocked with them, but maybe she
had spotted them on the run up to the deck.

Cedar fired at the men
who were firing at them, even as he watched the three scorpions
skittering closer.

“Why don’t you take care
of those creatures, and
I’ll
take care of the lock,” Cedar
said. His revolver clanked, empty of bullets, and he threw it at
one of the scorpions.

“Hard to take care of
anything when I haven’t had time to make anything,” Kali said, but
she scurried forward to intercept one of the fast-moving
scorpions.

Cedar’s heart nearly
stopped when he spotted a gangster aiming at her as the metal
creature spun its tail toward her. He whipped his rifle off his
back and chose to target the shooter—she must have a plan for the
scorpion. The man got off a shot, but he mustn’t have expected Kali
to drop to her knees in front of the creature, because his bullet
went high, eliciting a shout from someone on the opposite side of
the ship.

“You’re shooting into
each other,” Cedar yelled, not because he cared if they hit each
other but because he hoped that would make them pause. Before he
finished the words, he fired at the man presumptuous enough to aim
at a woman. A woman he cared about very much. Bastard.

His bullet took the
gangster in the chest, and he tipped backward, falling over the
railing. “Only fifty more to go,” he mumbled, guessing at the size
of the crew.

Kali pinned the scorpion
with her chisel and took a whack with the hammer, but the two other
metal creatures scurried in her direction, waving those tails.

Forcing himself to stay
calm, Cedar fired to one side of Kali, then the other. Both
scorpions exploded. Her hammer and chisel took care of the other
one, again leaving a blue stain on the deck.

Though aware of men
threatening to come at them from the sides, Cedar next lifted his
rifle toward the hatchway opposite the navigation cabin. Amelia
might be the biggest threat on the ship, and who knew what she
would send at them next?

But she had disappeared,
leaving the hatch closed. He wasn’t sure if she had gone back down
below decks or run around toward her flying contraption in the rear
of the ship.

He fired twice more
through the smoke and toward the men near the railings. Most of
them had taken cover. Expecting more shots at any moment, Cedar
spun back toward the navigation cabin door. Taking a step back to
make space, he blasted a bullet into the lock.

“That’s unsophisticated,”
Kali said, running up beside him, her hammer and chisel still in
hand.

“Darn.” Cedar kicked open
the door and leaped inside, another bullet chambered and ready to
fire.

It was a good thing,
because the pilot waited, facing the door with a six-shooter in
hand. The man fired, and Cedar would have caught the bullet in his
chest if he hadn’t lunged in so erratically. He returned fire, his
shot wild since he was in the middle of flinging himself through
the air. His bullet cracked through the glass in front of the wheel
as the man dropped to the deck.

The pilot retained his
wherewithal and aimed a second shot at Cedar. They fired at the
same time. Pain ripped through the side of Cedar’s leg as the
bullet grazed his calf. He saw his own bullet strike the pilot, but
it was Kali’s hammer crashing into the man’s temple that caused him
to drop his revolver.

Kali slammed the door
shut behind them. Rifles fired outside of the navigation cabin, and
more glass shattered, littering the deck of the cabin.

“Down,” Cedar said,
ignoring the pain in his leg and hauling her to the deck beside
him. “I’ll try to keep them back, but you’ll have to do whatever it
is you plan from down here.”

“Piloting without being
able to see. That always goes well.” As she complained, Kali
scrambled across the floor, cursing when broken glass cut her
hands. She reached the wheel, dropped her tools and her firearm on
the deck, and risked popping her head up.

Cedar poked his head and
rifle up, too, but with glass—or broken glass—on all sides, there
wasn’t a safe place from which to shoot. He fired indiscriminately,
barely aiming before he dropped back down again. Bullets whizzed
overhead, shattering more glass on their way through. He alternated
grinding his teeth and cursing Amelia. If not for her, Cedar and
Kali might have reached this spot, sneaked in, and quietly subdued
the pilot, taking control before anyone knew they were here. Now,
their deaths seemed inevitable. And for what? The flash gold? Cedar
didn’t give a damn about the flash gold. He’d only come up here to
protect Kali.

The ship shuddered, and
the gunfire outside the cabin stopped momentarily, alarmed shouts
coming from the crew.

“That your doing?” Cedar
asked.

“No, not yet.” Kali
lifted her head, only for a second, then made an adjustment to the
wheel.

Cedar risked poking his
own head up again. He saw far more than he wanted to see. A team of
four men headed toward the navigation cabin from the rear,
revolvers in their hands as they crouched low, clearly trying to
keep from being spotted. The hatchway leading to the main cabin
area was partially open again, with Amelia’s bandaged head just
visible again as she rooted in her satchel. Beyond the railing, the
American ship was bearing down on them—for whatever reason, it had
chosen
this
enemy airship to attack first. Further, the
black hull of one of the other gangster vessels loomed directly
ahead of their bow. Kali clearly meant to crash their craft into
it.

As cannons fired on the
American ship, Cedar hesitated, not certain which threat had to be
dealt with first. He opted for the men trying to sneak up on the
cabin while hoping Kali knew what she was doing. He stood and,
using the door for cover, poked his rifle through the broken window
beside it and shot the lead man approaching navigation. The team
spotted him and fired back. Bullets further shattered the glass,
and as Cedar put his back to the door, he felt more of them thud
into it behind him. Silently thanking the makers of the airship for
their love of solid wood, he loaded more rounds into the rifle he’d
acquired. There weren’t as many bullets in his pockets as he
wished. When he had been subduing men and taking their firearms and
ammunition, he thought he’d acquired plenty of both. That had been
before he’d known they would end up under siege in the center of an
airship full of enemies.

The group scattered as
soon as he started shooting at them, but they weren’t ready to
flee. The three remaining men dove for cover and continued firing
at the navigation cabin. Cedar squatted low since two had circled
around to the side and could see him beside the door. He managed to
check on Amelia again and get a shot off before he dropped. She was
stepping out of the hatch, raising something to throw.

A bevy of gunfire came
from beyond the railing, from the American ship. Cannons blasted,
thudding into the side of the ship Cedar and Kali were on. Behind
those cannons, dozens of armed men waited, wearing a mix of blue
and red uniforms. American soldiers and Mounties. The ship must
have collected reinforcements from Fort Selkirk. Cedar shook his
head, wishing those people were on the way to rescue him and Kali,
but they would shoot him as quickly as they would shoot the
gangsters. Judging by the grappling hooks a couple of the soldiers
were swinging, the combined forces intended to board this ship.
Cedar grimaced. He and Kali had nowhere to flee.

Something struck the back
of the door. It sounded like something soft, rather than something
hard, and he didn’t hear anything bounce off. Had Amelia thrown
it?

He didn’t dare open the
door to check and see what it was.

“Kali, is there any
chance—” He didn’t get to finish the sentence.

Amid a great banging and
snapping of wood, their ship crashed into the gangster ship in
front of it with such force that Cedar was hurled onto his back. An
explosion ripped the air somewhere nearby, and Cedar had no idea if
it came from their ship or the one they had hit. He didn’t know if
it mattered. Either way, he and Kali were doomed.

• • • • •

“I smell smoke,” Kali
said, releasing the navigation wheel and kneeling back.

Gunfire rang out from all
directions, and she did not know how she and Cedar would escape
without being shot, but she had succeeded in crashing their airship
into the other enemy airship, leaving two out of the three gangster
craft in a predicament. With Mounties and U.S. soldiers starting to
board, Kali trusted that the blackmailing criminals would soon be
taken care of, but the fighting might be ugly with many deaths
before anyone surrendered. The gangsters still had three ships to
the military’s one and probably more armed people, as well.

Kali wished she could
come up with a way to cause the damaged airships to crash fully
into the river below, but she would have to figure out a way to let
the gas out of the envelopes to cause that. She had already checked
all around the navigation cabin—what remained of it now that the
windows and several panels had been ravaged by bullets—and she
hadn’t seen a way to control the air mix. That was probably below
decks in the engine room.

“Smoke?” Cedar asked, his
voice incredulous. He crouched with his back to the door, keeping
his head below the level of the broken windows as he reloaded a
rifle and six-shooter. “Smoke is the
least
of our
problems.”

A bullet shattering glass
on its way through the navigation cabin punctuated his last word.
He snarled, flicking shards out of his hair before returning to his
work.

“You seem frazzled,” Kali
said, crinkling her nose.