came out in funny, little squeaks and cracks.
But I didn’t have time to poke fun. “I need that dampener.”
“There’s no time, he’s coming under the pallet car!” Ship’s panicked words rose to an ear piercing pitch.
I looked down. The tri-wing was climbing toward us, but one of its plasma cannons was on fire, looked like some of my burning timbers had ignited his thermal solids. To avoid an explosion, he’d have to eject the cannon, to do that he’d have to slow or risk the loosed weapon smashing into his tail or a rudder. But he wasn’t slowing, if anything he was increasing speed.
“Jazz, for the dark-realm’s sake, run for it!” Ship pleaded.
“No, he’s got to slow, he’s got to.”
“Would you?”
“Scrud,” I cursed. Ship was right, this Crank wasn’t about to let us get away. I was still drifting and needed to get to a full stop in order to reactivate the dampener. But without it I hadn’t a prayer of escaping the tri-plane. Dead if I do, dead if I don’t.
“So be it,” I said and nailed the throttles.
“Now what are you doing? We’re headed straight for him!”
“Exactly.”
“But we’ll be destroyed!”
“At least we won’t die alone.”
The tri-plane and I were locked in a game of aeronautical chicken, and I doubted whether either of us was going to give a meter.
“I suddenly find myself thinking of my mother.”
I could feel my grip on the yoke handles tightening. My throat narrowed to the point that I couldn’t have swallow if I’d wanted to. “You never had a mother,” I managed to force out despite it.
“I like to imagine what she’d be like if I had.”
“She’d be scaly, bug eyed, twiggy armed, have those feathery antennae, and she’d make that creepy buzz with her transparent wings.”
“Beautiful, I know,” Ship sighed.
This was it; the moment of impact was upon us, but something outside howled a horrible roar. The red dragon, moving fast, shot up from below, its huge wings were spread wide and its neck was stretched out. It enveloped the tri-wing in its massive jaws and slammed them closed with a rending of steel and a flash of flame.
“Holy scrud-cakes!” I gasped; eyes open wide, and fumbled with the controls. I just managed to run Ship around a lash of the lizard’s tail, but, as it swept clear my canopy filled with the oncoming pallet car. Ship’s proximity alarms screamed and warning lights flashed on the control board.
“Pull up! Pull Up!” Ship screeched.
Gritting my teeth, I yanked the yoke back and rotated the control armature over until I was on my back with my feet facing the canopy. I grunted, straining to pull ship into a vertical climb. Then something banged, metal crunched, and Ship began to shutter.
“Now you’ve done it. You broke my tail on that scow car, we’re out of control.”
“Maybe,” I grunted, trying to regain control of the violently shaking flycraft.
“Eject! Eject Jazz, and save yourself.”
“No scrudding way. I rely on you too much. Besides, who’d I have to hate without you?” My head was shaking so violently I could hardly see.
“Just about everyone.”
“Shut it, I’m busy!” I was straining with all my might. The tail was completely unresponsive and the dampener was offline so I kicked out of the pedal straps and braced my feet against the sides of the cabin. Now I could use my legs to help brace the control yoke. I dropped the throttles down to crawling speed. This made Ship even less easy to handle, but it had also lessened the shaking. I aligned Ship over the nearest gondola, doing my best to match its speed and course, and then cut the engines.
“Sweet mother of evil! What are you—Ouch!”
With a loud slosh, Ship dropped into the gondola, tipped up on its side, then slid several meters down a pile of something slimy and banged into the side of the car. Something dark and gross splashed up and covered the canopy. Normally I appreciated the view Ship’s big, helicopter-like bubble afforded me. But not that time.
Ship was in a typical total panic. “I’m dead, destroyed, done-for.”
“You’re fine…mostly, you dope.”
“For the moment. What is that wretched smell?”
My nose wrinkled and I almost gagged. I pinched my nostrils closed and must have sounded like I had a bad case of the snots. “Um…” How could I put this delicately? “I think we landed in a sewage scow. Hey, what did you mean, for the moment?”
My answer came when the stub-wing fighter appeared in the air above us; its plasma cannons were all ready hot with charges.
“Oh scrud! Get the inertial dampener back online! And activate the vid-screen— double time.”
“I’m going, I’m going.”
The stub-wing was jockeying for a good position. We were on our side, half covered in the mucky cargo, and the fighter seemed to be having a little trouble drawing a bead on us. The pilot, if he had half a brain, would be careful not to damage the car, as the carrier union barely tolerated the Cranks as it was, and he’d be keeping a weather-eye out for that apparently angry dragon—darn lizards were just too sensitive about belly shocks.
“Inertial dampener sequence begun. Vid screen back online.”
The screen flickered back to life. Its color coded readout did little more for me than show indistinguishable object positions, but Ship could read it fine. The Crank was growing inpatient and opened up with a blast of its wing-tip machine guns.
“Whoa!” I shouted and instinctively covered my head with an arm. Bullets rained down on Ship’s hull, bounced off his thankfully thick canopy, and ricocheted off the car’s metal sides. Circles appeared in the brown muck like raindrops in a mud puddle. “I need that dampener now, grack it!”
“Then you’ve got it now, grack it!”
The active inertial dampener light flashed to life. “Yee-ha!” I punched in Ship’s quick-start code. With a blast of hot, high-pressure fuel his twin engines burst to life. I jammed my feet in the pedal straps and pulled both up. Even without the tail controls, with the dampener on I could manage a pretty good job of maneuvering, especially at low speeds. Good thing too. Hearing my engines flair must have panicked the Crank, because the moment they did he fired one of his cannons.
Ship leapt up just in time to avoid the impact. The white-hot ball hit the side of the car and the plasma began to spread, melting everything it touched. Sloppy goo began pouring from the car and dumping onto whatever happened to be below us. The plasma continued spreading and the side of the car was disappearing.
I leaned back and drew the yoke high, easing Ship up and away from the barge. But the canopy was partially covered in the ooze, blocking a clear view.
“Dive! Dive!” Ship yelled.
I shoved the yoke forward and jammed the pedals down. Ship dropped six meters as a plasma bolt screeched over us so closely that I could smell burning sludge, and it smelled even worse hot. When Ship stopped descending abruptly I had to wait a second for my stomach to catch up. Ship sprayed cleaner over the canopy and cycled its squeegee, clearing my view. The Stub-wing was recharging its cannons and didn’t appear to be in any hurry about it. He must have assumed we’d been more badly damaged then we were; bad assumption.
A tight-lipped sneer slid over my face as I flipped the trigger covers up and activated the laser-sights. I repositioned my goggles for a clear view and met the Crank’s gaze through his helmet visor. Behind him the sewage scow had burned though and many hundreds of cars that had been coupled behind it began to drop from the sky. Someone was in big trouble.
“Jazz, wait, don’t—”
“Cram it Ship,” I said still sneering and jammed the triggers down. Ship’s overcautious nature had gotten me into trouble before; better to ignore the curmudgeon. Both of Ship’s field cannons fired simultaneously, the big, osriilium balls smashed two perfectly round holes though the stub-wing’s hull. The impact flipped it ove
r and pushed it back, so I missed seeing my opponent’s surprised expression. It dropped like an anvil from the sky trailing a thick line of black smoke.
“Yes!” I cheered, pumping a fist down. “Another slash mark for the Jazz,” I boasted just before the warning buzzer went off.
“I suppose you hear that milady?”
I scanned the screen. “I see a big gray blob moving toward us. I don’t suppose it’s a weather drone or one of those cruise dirigibles?” The dragon’s massive head appeared above Ship’s nose and spat fire at us. Ship was well insulated, and the fire wouldn’t hurt us, but she’d be figuring that out really soon. “Oh-yeah, we’re dead.”
“That’s what I keep telling you, you oaf.”
The fire show ended and I well expected to be eaten, but the red didn’t look so good. She burped, spouting flame, then burped again, a louder than thunder dragon burp, this time hurling a flume of white-hot fire.
Ship’s alarms sounded the immanent death warning. “Too hot, too hot.”
“That’s plasma, but how?” I could feel my brow wrinkle, but then begin to smooth over with realization. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s it!”
“Oh no, not again.”
I drew the controls back, sliding Ship as quickly backward as its broken tail would allow. The dragon moved like it was going to follow, but her face wrinkled with concern, the way yours might if you’d eaten some clams and you couldn’t quite remember how long they’d been in the fridge. One giant claw moved to its distended belly. Then it shook and belched plasma. Then, with realization filling its