Heart of Steel - Meljean Brook [34]
She met Ginger at the ladder leading topside. Yasmeen climbed to the weather deck first, but it was impossible to shield the girl from the carnage. Steeling herself, Yasmeen moved carefully through the bodies to the tether line anchoring the airship to the dock. She hauled back the capstan’s lever. Her lady gave a great shudder as the machine began to wind the tether cable, dragging her down to the water.
Ginger came up out the hatchway and unfolded the glider. “Are you coming, Captain?”
Yasmeen didn’t know. “Go, Ginger. Now.”
The girl ran for the side and jumped. A heated updraft lifted her, and the glider wobbled, but she quickly gained control.
One made it off alive, then. It could never be enough.
Yasmeen turned back to her crew. Anger and desolation followed her around the deck. Pegg, blond hair matted with blood. Pegg the Mister, his staring eyes fixed in his wife’s direction. Bebé Laverne, who’d once saved the entire crew with a derringer she’d hidden between her ample ass cheeks. Rousseau.
Oh, sweet lady, Rousseau. She knelt beside him, closed his eyes, smoothed her fingers over his wonderful, bushy brows. If only she’d been here to fight beside him.
His stomach had been opened. All of the aviators had been killed with blades—quietly and quickly. As soon as her crew had become aware of the danger, they’d been able to reach their weapons, but most hadn’t had time to use them.
Whoever had done this, Yasmeen would do the same to them—but she wouldn’t promise quiet or quick.
The sound of grinding metal stopped her heart. No. Yasmeen raced to the capstan. The tether line vibrated with tension. The air around her wavered with heat. Gritting her teeth, she braced her feet against the deck, threw her weight against the capstan’s steel spokes, adding her strength to the machine’s.
It wouldn’t matter. She knew it wouldn’t. The capstan was strong enough to pull the airship down, but not when a fire was heating the hydrogen in the balloon’s envelope, expanding the gas. The capstan couldn’t become any stronger—but her lady would become lighter and lighter. Eventually the tether line would snap.
But more likely, her lady would explode first.
Already stretched tight as a drum, the balloon appeared ready to burst at the seams. It would only take a tiny leak, enough air to fill a sigh.
Or a scream. Yasmeen let hers loose, pushing against the spoke with all her might, her muscles shaking with effort. It didn’t move.
Her lady shuddered again. Yasmeen’s feet skidded out from beneath her. Her knees crashed into the deck. Spikes of pain shot up her thighs.
The deep rumble from below became a roar.
Yasmeen’s throat closed, and she listened to the sound of fire tearing through the lower decks. Her lady’s belly had burned through. Perhaps only a small hole in the hull, but now air was rushing in . . . and there was no hope of saving her now.
A spark landed near her knee. Another. Yasmeen forced herself to her feet. Fire climbed the ropes toward the envelope. Not much time—and there was one thing left to save.
She dropped down through the hatchway into a corridor of smoke and flame. The door to her quarters was burning. She slammed through.
The steel strongbox was closed. That was all she’d needed to know—but she couldn’t return the way she’d come. Flames rolled across the ceiling of her cabin.
Left alone since they’d wound down during Archimedes’ visit, the mechanical lovebirds were still quiet. She ripped the bottom of the cage away, fitted it into the starboard porthole, twisted until the escape mechanism engaged. Glass shattered and wood shredded as the porthole rotated open, doubling in size. With another twist, she could create a standing autogyro from the two portholes, but she had no time, and the turbulence from the fire would likely