She called down the tube at her right side, “Ramming speed!”
The engines’ pulse picked up as the engineers opened the furnace engine’s valves. The monks working the manual drives doubled their speed. Hualiama concentrated on their target. No telling what the pilot might do when he realised that they intended to ram him. The standard defensive manoeuvre was to present the stern crossbows for several shots at the opponent’s navigation cabin, before making an emergency dive or ascent.
Closer. Outside, on the gantries flanking the navigation cabin, she saw groups of monks tensioning the crossbows–two traditional crossbows, which fired quarrels six feet long, and two elastic catapult contraptions which she had never seen before.
Lia pursed her lips as the other pilot held his nerve, and his position.
“Fight well for the Dragon,” said Ja’al, ducking out of the cabin.
Ahead, on the southern ledge where four Human villages were located, Lia saw smoke pouring up from the houses and what she took for a glint of weaponry. The villagers were not giving up without a fight. She wondered if the local monastery had dispatched their monks to assist.
The flanking Dragonships drove forward in a tight wedge formation, angling for the thickest of the fighting.
A catapult twanged. With a scream, “For the Dragon!” Ja’al shot across the divide between the Dragonships. Arrows homed in on his flying form, but abruptly skittered away as if frightened. Another handy trick. That monk was far too talented for his own good.
Hualiama’s vessel rocked slightly as the crossbows fired simultaneously with the enemy vessel’s weapons. She dipped the Dragonship’s nose to the port side, causing one bolt to skitter off the armoured crysglass. The other penetrated but Lia was already ducking smoothly, driven by an instinct which hardly seemed her own. The crossbow quarrel plugged into the wall behind her right shoulder–too close for comfort.
Ja’al jinked mid-air before alighting nimbly on the gantry beside the enemy’s starboard crossbow. His swords flickered. One pirate fell immediately, but his three fellows laid into the monk with a vengeance. Ja’al’s tall form seemed to drift like smoke between their sword-strokes, driving two of the pirates into each other’s arms while the monk delivered a crushing kick to the last man’s sternum, smashing him overboard to a fatal fall. Mercy.
As Lia grimly maintained her collision course, she assessed the orientation of the enemy vessel’s adjustable turbines. This pilot would drop, she was convinced of it. Two more monks shot across the gap, while crossbow quarrels and arrows were fired back in reply. Crysglass shattered to Hualiama’s left, showering her with fragments. She clutched the controls even as she ducked, holding their course steady. Lia reassured Flicker with a touch of her mind as he moaned, dreaming. Port and starboard, monks fell lightly through the air. Most did not possess Ja’al’s power, rappelling with incredible rapidity down ropes. Others simply flung themselves to the winds, creating a deadly rain of monks wielding staves tipped with wicked, eight-inch blades either end, or the more traditional, slightly curved sword called nazatha, which meant ‘the warrior’s arm’.
Hualiama’s hand punched the controls a fraction of a second behind the other pilot’s move. A feint! She adjusted instantly, bringing their lance back onto its deadly course. The Dragonships were so close, she clearly saw the enemy navigator sweating behind his own crysglass windows as he threw himself on the emergency gas release. Their balloon sagged. Too late.
Yelling, “Brace!” into her command tubes, Lia brought the nose down in one fell swoop.
She had never rammed another Dragonship before. Legs flexed, expecting the collision, Hualiama was startled when it began with a dull pop–PAH! A teeth-gritting squeal followed. The ramming spar punctured the enemy’s balloon, stringing the two dirigibles together like gourds on a single branch. Then, the reinforced nose of their Dragonship impacted the enemy’s navigation cabin.
KEERAACK!
The shock smacked her face against the throttle.
“Ralti sheep droppings!” Blood trickled down the bridge of her nose, but she caught Flicker before he fell.
“Take us down gently,” ordered Master Jo’el. “Leave the dragonet here. Put your hood up and follow Hallon and Rallon into the villages.”
“And you, Master–”
“I’m off to capture a Dragonship,” he said, diving headlong through their shattered window into the cabin opposite. The Master rolled smoothly to his feet, a baton sprouting in either hand as though summoned by magic. Four swordsmen surged toward him. A whirlwind of robes and flying batons enveloped the cabin. By the time Lia