“Because you waved at them? And they waved back?”
“Because it’s their job to guard the skies over the South, and protect its travelers from harm during wartime,” she protested—though privately she believed that, yes, good Southern boys would’ve hightailed it back to prove their chivalry, given half a chance to do so. “But they didn’t. They didn’t even stick around to watch. They just kept flying.”
“So perhaps they didn’t give a damn what became of us and went on their merry way, leaving the other ship behind to deal with a couple of maniacs out for a flight. You said they weren’t armed.”
“Didn’t appear to be, no. But,” she added quickly, “I might’ve been wrong. Do you think they’d gone far enough to miss the fireball?”
He shrugged. “Far enough that they wouldn’t have heard it inside the cabin. If they weren’t looking behind them, they might not’ve seen it. I don’t know, and I still don’t know what side they’re on. But we’re coming up on them fast, so tell me what you see.”
“I see…” She held the spyglass a fraction away from her cheek. “There’s something in the road. A … a caravan of some sort! Henry, this might be them!”
“If the cargo ship is hanging around it, then that’s probably a good sign. Or a bad one,” he said. If his lips weren’t turning blue, they might’ve been set in a grim, uncertain line.
Under her breath she asked, “But are they stopping the caravan to investigate it, or help it?” Through the spyglass, she couldn’t quite tell.
“Another five minutes and we’ll be on top of them.” Henry said it like a warning.
“Or…”
“Or what?”
The big ship stopped its slow descent and began to rise again. It pivoted to face them.
It was Maria’s turn to issue a warning: “Or maybe they’ll be on top of us.”
“Shit.”
While she still had a spare moment to do so, she turned the spyglass to the ground and did a hasty estimation of the caravan. As fast as she could count, she called it out. “Eight horses drawing four carts. Maybe thirty men, all uniformed. One rolling-crawler, the Texian kind, but bigger than the ones you usually see. They’ve stopped. They’re hailing the cargo runner, like they aren’t sure why it’s rising again. The ship is there as friend, not foe. Henry, set us down.”
“Where?”
“Anywhere, but set us down now. Set us down!” she hollered at him, her throat too frozen to manage the shriek she would’ve liked to deliver.
“I’m … I’ll try! What do you see?”
She saw a hatch ratcheting down from the ship’s underside, a bulbous protrusion descending from the hull. She’d never seen a turret that could be retracted inside the belly of a ship before; only the ones that were affixed and unmoving, that would leave anyone who sat inside them exposed to enemy fire.
“A ball turret,” she breathed. “With one of the biggest guns I’ve ever—”
The cargo vessel’s gun fired, kicking out a round of such power that the ship rocked gently as it sent the shell careening through the sky, covering the space between them in one, two, three seconds.
In one, two, three seconds Henry managed to swerve to the right. It was only a tiny, insufficient angle out of the way, except it meant that when the shell struck them head-on it didn’t go straight through their windscreen and kill them both. Instead it crashed beneath their feet, cutting through the engine and out the top of the chassis.
The Black Dove balked violently, shaking almost in a full circle, sending them closer to upside down than Maria had ever been in her life. If she’d eaten anything at all that day she would’ve lost it in the clouds. But the hemp belt held her inside the small cabin, if not in the seat—she hovered above it, and then her backside slammed down again, jarring her whole body. Her head knocked against Henry’s shoulder, and his knees crashed against the underside of the controls.
He fought to find the levers, wrestled with the engine, and lost.
Black, billowing smoke coughed upward and the motor went utterly silent.
The world froze.
The sky was cold, clear, and unmoving, and the ground below was sharp and distant, miles and miles away—or so it looked. And so it felt, until the end of that moment, when the Black Dove pitched forward, dragged by the weight of its dead motor, and began to fall.
Henry cranked viciously at the controls, jerking the clutch and receiving no response. Nothing. Not a cough or a sputter. Not a spark of electricity. Not even smoke. All of it was gone. The little craft sailed, gliding only at a tiny angle, aimed for the ground.
“Henry!” Maria screamed.
He reached over his shoulder and into the tiny back cargo space and pulled out a pack. “There’s just the one!” he screamed back as he wrestled his arms into a pair of straps.
“One what?”
“Of these. Come here—I’m undoing the belt!”
“Henry!”
“Trust me or die!” he told her. With one hand he seized her by the waist. With the other he snapped the hemp belt free and stood up inside the shattered, uncovered cab, taking her with him. Dangling in the firmament, he grabbed her tightly—both arms now—and kicked free of the wreckage. And then they were still falling, but falling together … above the battered Dove, and then beside it.
Maria’s clothes billowed violently and her hair tried to tear itself off her head. She wanted to fight Henry, in order to … what? Swim in the sky? Fall by herself? Take these last seconds in silence, to pray or to reminisce, regret or wonder, and prepare for whatever came next?
His grip was a vise around her ribs. He shouted into her ear, but still she barely heard him: “Hang on to me! Now!”
She gave up her struggle and did as he commanded, because why not? Let their bones break together, and let them dig a crater to be both of their graves.
But instead, Henry ripped at a cord that dangled from the pack on his back, and the fall jerked to a shattering stop—still well above the trees below. The terrific yank sucked all the air out of Maria’s chest and nearly snapped her neck; but she thrust her face into Henry’s throat and clung to him for dear life, now that she understood. Or, if she didn’t understand, she believed, and that was close enough for now.
As long as they floated in the middle of the sky, held aloft by a great umbrella-like cloth that flapped noisily over their heads.
“Emergency harness!” he said loudly. “One’s required in all these little passenger crafts!”
“Emergency,” she muttered into his neck, refusing to open her eyes or look down. She damn well assumed it was an emergency piece, for surely no one in their right mind would don such a thing recreationally.
Her head ached, her ribs were bruised all the way around, and she could scarcely breathe. Her arms felt as if they’d been half pulled from their sockets, and her feet dangled until she wrapped them around Henry’s legs, seeking whatever slight stability she could glean from the situation.
And still they fell.
They swayed back and forth, buffeted by the wind and without any protection at all, not even the pitiful guard of the tiny craft, which crashed somewhere below them. She heard it hit and crumple, and she thanked heaven and Henry that she was not inside it. Though being in midair was only marginally better, as she was still definitely alive—but for how long?
She could feel the wind dragging them in this direction, then that direction, and on top of everything else she was dizzy. “Can you control this at all?” she begged him, nearer to tears than she’d been in a decade.
“Not at all, I’m afraid,” he replied, and he did in fact sound sorry. “Hold on tight, Maria! We’re going down. We’re going down fast.”
Not as fast as they might have otherwise, but fast enough that when they fell through the tops of two trees it was like being beaten by a mob, and when the final tree caught them in its uppermost branches it was such a horrible way to stop that she almost envied the Black Dove—for at least its awful fall had ended already.
Their fall continued, though she clung to Henry until she was knocked free of him—and then she fell alone, down branches, through dead leaves and abandoned squirrel nests. Her body stripped a line of bark bare from the tree, and her gloves were no protection at all. Her skirts did a somewhat better job of shielding her legs, and her corset may or may not have guarded her organs like armor, but none of it helped very much. When she finally landed on her back, staring up at the hole she’d left in a tree, she watched the emergency sheet snag, tear, and wave forlornly above her.
And then she wondered where Henry was.
He told her: “Ow.”
“Oh, dear—I’m … I’m sorry…”
She rolled off his arm, then kept rolling until she was on her back again, beside him. She hadn’t left him after all.
She couldn’t breathe. No, she was breathing. She put her hand to her chest and felt it rise and fall, but she was so winded that it meant very little. She could do nothing but lie there, as still as she could manage, and wait for her lungs to catch up to the rest of her.
Every inch of her body hurt. She scarcely knew where to begin to check for injuries, so instead she asked Henry, “Are you all right? Mostly? More all right than not?” The words came out in whispers, in time with her every exhalation. It was the only way she could speak at all.
“Yes,” he said in a similar gasp. “No. Wait. Mostly, I think. My arm, though.”
“The one I was lying on?”
“The one you landed on.”
“Ah. Is it…?”
He rolled over onto his side. “Broken. Not as bad as it could be,” he said with a wince.
When she turned her head, she could see that yes, his hand was lying at an unhealthy angle. “Oh, no. We need to brace it.” She wiggled a bit and frowned. No longer lying on his arm, but she was somehow still lying upon something. Ah. Her satchel. Still slung around her chest. Would wonders never cease?