Falling Sky Read Online Free Page B

and that’s usually enough. But I’m not strictly defenseless.
    As I pass over the other ship’s envelope, it starts to rise, having caught sight of me, but I’m already pulling up myself, and I move to the exit hatch. I keep a variety of large, jagged things aboard the ship—rocks, twisted pieces of metal, and so on. I take one of these, a roughly round but sharp-edged rock and roll it out of the hatch.
    As it reaches the edge, gravity takes hold of it and pulls it down with relentless force. The enemy ship has closed some of the distance between us, but there’s still enough to allow the stone to punch a hole through the other ship’s envelope.
    If it was hydrogen in there, I could blow it to hell. But this is a Gastown ship, which means helium. So I have to improvise.
    As rare as guns are, bullets are a little easier to come by these days, especially if you save and refill your spent shell casings. But even easier to come by is gunpowder. Don’t get me wrong—it’s not like it grows on trees, but you can make it if you have the right ingredients. And one easy way is to just collect a lot of urine, something we had plenty of back at the Core. You can also collect bat guano, which a guy I knew way back used to do. The salts from that and a little sulfur and charcoal make gunpowder.
    Bullets are a little harder, because you need some metal. But take some gunpowder, drop it into a tube with a fuse in one end, and you have a nice pipe bomb.
    I generally keep a few around for emergencies or for dropping down a Feral nest. I light the fuse on one, hoping that the glowing end will withstand the winds at this altitude. Then I carefully fit it into the crossbow the boffins mocked up for me. Then, aiming carefully, I fire.
    My heart seems to stop as the tiny projectile arcs through the air between the two ships.
    I only have this one shot. Then I’ll have passed over the other ship and it will likely bring its weapons to bear on me.
    Then, like it’s been swallowed, my pipe bomb disappears into the other ship’s envelope.
    I run for the controls of my baby, and as soon as my hands find them I push away.
    Most of the cameras on the Cherub are shot despite the boffin’s best efforts, but the one on her belly is still intact. Through the screen, the explosion is visible as a flash inside the other ship’s envelope and what I swear is a ripple through the semirigid frame. It doesn’t destroy the ship, but it rips through enough of its ballonets that it starts to descend, deprived of a good part of its lifting power.
    I pull the Cherub away in a burst of speed, the other ship doing the same, and soon the enemy dirigible is just a speck behind us.
    My radio crackles to life on the public trading channel that most airship captains set their radios to. I pick my handset up.
    â€œThank you for the save,” comes a male voice. Deep, smooth.
    â€œI don’t much like bullies,” I respond.
    There’s a crackling pause on the other end. Then he speaks again. “Do you happen to have any medical supplies on your ship?”
    I hesitate before answering. I do, supplies carefully cobbled together from the Core, but do I want to tell him that? I size up his ship, its condition. Finally, I say, “Yes. You in need?”
    â€œAfraid so. One of the shots clipped me. We’re a little low on supplies. I thought that maybe we could barter you something for them.”
    I consider this. Giving up some of my medical supplies doesn’t appeal to me much. But he’s offering barter. Still, I don’t much like that “we” he mentioned.
    â€œFollow me,” I eventually say. “I’ll take us to a meeting place.”
    I tell myself that I want to meet these people. I want to know what their little altercation was about. I tell myself that I want to see what they have to offer in return for the medical supplies.
    But frankly, my love of solitude