Clementine

But Maria had another good shot, and she took it.

She rocked the active switch and crushed her hands around the oversized triggers, throwing another dozen slugs at the cruiser-this time aiming lower. Though the gun was almost impossible to guide with any finesse, she did her damnedest and the gun responded better than she had any right to expect. The arc of the bullets dipped and cut a punctured line along the lower hull of the cruiser, and one of the last slugs clipped the bottom left thruster-lodging inside it, perhaps, or maybe only blasting through it.

The thruster sparked and smoked, but didn’t fail altogether…and she couldn’t tell if any real damage had been done because at that moment, the Valkyrie collided head-on with the second smaller vessel, and the sound of an explosion shook the bird hard from the far side, relative to Maria’s captive position in the ball turret.

She clung to the gun though the heat of it warmed her too much through her clothes and through the big gloves that flopped around on her fingers. The split on the glass stretched-she watched it widen like a smile, and she held her breath.

The weight of the automatic gun and the weight of the glass itself, not to mention the weight of Maria’s body suspended there, thighs clenched around a narrow seat meant for a man…how much would the wounded bubble hold? She closed her eyes and waited for the Valkyrie to settle, and as the ship rolled she saw the other small ship toppling down to earth in a widening ball of fire that drew a comet’s tail of soot and sparks down through the sky.

Had there been another ship? She couldn’t remember.

Too many things to keep track of at once.

But the cruiser was still there, hovering-she could see it again when the Valkyrie swung itself around, pulling out of the spin and righting itself. The cruiser was blowing smoke, but not very much of it. She’d nicked something important but it wasn’t enough to slow their pursuer so she rounded the gun again and, praying she had enough ammunition to keep the threat coming, she clamped down on the triggers and blew more air-to-air birdshot slugs into the clouds.

The cruiser fired back, but it leaned backwards and the shots went too high to do more than graze the edge of the Valkyrie’s hull.

Along the glass the crack’s smile stretched all the longer, and now it was accompanied by the sickening, deep tinkle of ice that won’t hold for more than another few minutes.

“Captain!” she shouted.

“What now?”

“I have to…” The ball shifted and Maria’s seat dropped half an inch that nearly stopped her heart. She released her grip on the gun and scrambled backward, off the seat and in hurried retreat until she had one leather-booted foot on the edge.

A whistling hiss joined the slow shatter; air was entering from somewhere, and it was colder than ordinary winter. It smelled like water.

“Oh Jesus,” she swore as she got one hand up over the edge, but the gloves she wore were meant for a man more than twice her size and she lost her grip; she relaxed her fingers, swung her hand, and the gloves flew off, then she grabbed again at the edge and found it. She was suspended that way, using the width and breath of her reach to hoist herself above the glass ball with the rocking gun, and the glass ball was breaking beneath her. Hinges were stretching with unfamiliar uneve

The cruiser reared into view, once more, and much closer. It was coming in fast and high-its underbelly exposed, its lower engines and thrusters a target almost too sweet to resist. But the glass was splitting and the gun, which was mounted on a set of tracks, was drooping as the structure failed.

She braced her feet, pi

The cruiser wouldn’t hold its position long, but she couldn’t hold her position long either and it was a war of time between her muscles, the glass ball turret, and the cruiser’s path.

With the cold air came cold water, condensing and freezing, and Maria’s buttressing hand slid. She grappled for her handhold and lost it, and was an instant shy of toppling down onto the increasingly fragile surface below her when an enormous black hand seized her scrambling fingers.

She whipped her head around to see Croggon Hainey, feet planted apart, and shortly with both hands wrapped around her wrist.

“Woman, are you mad?” he demanded.

She said, “Yes! Or no! Or look-” and she pointed at the cruiser with its upturned belly. “I can take it down!”

“That ball turret is going to go, any second!”

“No!” she shouted at him, and struggled to dip herself down, letting him hold most of her weight. “This is my life at stake here too, you’ve made it more than clear you bastard, so let me help us survive!”

The length of his arms gave her a few precious extra inches to lean, and when she touched the trigger paddle she jerked herself forward to seize it, and squeeze with all her might.

A spray of half a dozen bullets went soaring through a low-flying cloud, into the underside of the Yankee cruiser and straight through its already-wounded thruster. Three new sets of smoke and sparks burst to life and she cheered, “See! I told you!”

But the pressure of the gun’s kickback was too much for the glass, and it split.

And it fell, out from underneath her.

Just like that, the sky was a sucking thing, blowing ice up her skirt and against her skin, and beneath her the ground was amazingly far away. She held her breath because she could not breathe, and she swung her legs because she lacked the strength to do anything else. Wisps of cloud billowed past her, screamed between her legs, and lashed at her arms, but she did not fall.

She spun like a ballerina in a music box, suspended from the vise of the captain’s hands.

9. OUR PLAYERS COME TO AN AGREEMENT

Hainey hoisted Maria with a jerk and a backwards stumble that drew her up out of the hole left by the former glass ball turret; and although the sucking vortex left by the circular absence roared with broken, swirling wind, they were safely away from its reach. For a few seconds, Maria lay panting on the metal floor-and then she sat up, letting the wild, intruding air flay her hair to pieces.

She said, “Oh no. My underthings.”

“Your what?”

“My…never mind.” She leaned forward just enough to see over the edge just a little bit, and she spied the undergarments floating happily down to Missouri. “Are we safe? Did we get them all?”

The captain stood up, swung his head slowly back and forth, and backed away-urging her to do likewise. He said, “You got the last of them. Goddamn, woman. You almost got yourself killed.”

“Well, I didn’t. And…well, I think it’s only clear and honest to point out, I owe that to you.” She rubbed at her wrists, where the red marks of his grasp were flushing into a pattern of hands. “Why did you do that? You could’ve let me fall. Maybe you should have. It might’ve been more convenient for you to do so.”

He stared down into the hole and told her, “Just reflex, I guess. It’s not every day I see a half-dressed woman falling out of a ball turret.” He turned to climb the three or four steps up into the bridge, and she rose to follow behind him. Over his shoulder he added, “And anyway, you took down the cruiser.”

Once they were away from the whistling void, Maria didn’t have to shout when she said, “I didn’t have much choice. I thought we’d worked that out.”