Typically, air raids had a death count in single digits. If too many die, the cargo crashes to the ground, far below, and is destroyed. It’s just bad business. Yet, in the first violent moments of the attack, three enemy ships were sent plummeting.
“Focus all fire away from the Cruiser!” The Captain of the North Star stood tall at the helm, her voice booming above the gunfire. The spindly man to her left moved to echo her command, but turned back, his brow furrowed.
“M’sorry, which one, Cap’n?”
Rousseau sighed, her eyes closed. “The big one, Mr. Dodge. The big, slow one.”
Her first mate nodded, and set off to holler out at the crew. Captain Rousseau maneuvered the ship through the skies above Orlandia with precision and skill only a handful of others could match. What gave that precision its razor’s edge, however, was the pirate’s secret to ruling the skies. The North Star boasted six Kahzredanium compression engines, forsaking cargo space for the added mobility. This made the vessel infamously difficult to hit, and left her enemies dead in the air, respectively. A fact Rousseau used to deadly effect. Within short order, the small fleet guarding the merchant vessel was left at two ships.
“Just a few o’ the vultures left, Ladies!”
Illus. by Damon Dykes
The Captain’s hard stare locked onto the Skimmer off the port side. Wood groaned as the North Star’s engines fired against their momentum. The ship’s stern lined up with the center of the Skimmer, speed building. Desperate pleas and cries rolled out from the skimmer as the crew members leapt overboard with makeshift Kitesails and parachutes.
The North Star was too close. What crew remained on the skimmer could do nothing but wait, and brace for impact.
The iron tipped stern of Captain Rousseau’s ship was now just a few feet from the Skimmer’s hull, when the airship dropped, like a lead weight. The North Star hit nothing. Rousseau stood at the helm, stunned and as confused as her crew, before bringing the airship around.
“Grab the wheel, Miss Colfer,” she said.
A broad shouldered, dark skinned woman rushed up from the main deck. Without waiting, Rousseau turned to the edge of the ship and looked over. Her eyes narrowed, darting about. The Skimmer wasn’t dropping to Earth at terminal velocity. It wasn’t even gliding at a slow pace. The airship simply wasn’t there.
The Captain leaned further, craning her neck to get a look further under them. Then the stern of the ship yanked down and toward where the Skimmer should have been, and Captain Charlotte Rousseau was knocked from her ship, into the open air.
Illus. by John Thompson
She tumbled, end over end, faster and faster, the wind past her head growing louder and louder. Rousseau fought against the pull of gravity to stabilize herself, and slowly flattened out. Yet the roar of the rushing wind didn’t stop growing in strength. When she realized this, she also discovered that she wasn’t free falling. She was being pulled, faster, toward where the Skimmer should have been. And as she approached, she could finally see what looked like a wide, jagged split in the air, where all the light was being pulled toward. Just as she reached the rift, she felt two large, rough hands clamp down around her ankle. Then she and the hands fell through the rift. Every color she had ever seen exploded about her, accompanied by a sudden rush of warmth. As sudden as the warmth came, it was replaced by a searing pain tearing at her skin, pulling her limbs in different directions. Rousseau could feel the hands around her ankles squeeze tighter, nails digging into skin.
Then they were yanked to a stop, suspended in the air. Rousseau looked back at her foot and saw Mr. Dodge half way through the sky.
“I gotcha, Cap’n!”
Captain Rousseau exhaled with relief. “This, Mr. Dodge. This is why I hired you. Now if you’d please-.”
The Captain was cut off as the sound of air blowing passed them suddenly ceased, and Mr. Dodge’s face screwed up in pain and confusion. Rousseau didn’t realize she was falling once again until she bounced off the main sail of the Skimmer, now wrecked, and crashed in a heap on the ground.
She slowly rose into a seated position and looked around her. Towering dark spires were off in the distance, and the sky was covered in dark clouds. Where the skies she had spent her life sailing through tasted fresh and crisp, this place tasted of copper.
And still grimacing, his hands still clamped around her ankle, was the top half of Mr. Dodge.