Thistle in the Sky | #NONC2022 | ✔

Chapter Twenty-Two

The decks were still safe. Farah stumbled on the tilting floor as the Ariomma's remaining hydrogen fought to counteract the drop of its decimated tail, where each successive gasbag had been shredded or burned. She stumbled down the stairs to the lower deck and found her way back to the radio room more by intuition than memory.

"They're coming!" came a shout from below. "Give them one more—Farah!"

Farah reached the bottom of the stairs and almost collapsed as she skidded on the glass-strewn floor. A man straddling the windowsill swore when he saw Kaz.

"Lintang, send another harness over; we've got one injured!" he shouted out the window. The Nectamia floated twenty meters away, picked out against the night by the flickering glow of the Ariomma. Sparks rained down dangerously close to its tail. Farah stumbled again as the Ariomma's tilt intensified. A harness with another rope skidded down the line the man in the window was holding.

"Get this on him," he growled.

Farah wasted no time sitting her brother on the desk and strapping him in. The man said something to Gemi. She was already harnessed, with a rope like Kaz's connecting her to the Nectamia outside. It was running out of slack as the Ariomma drifted downwards. Gemi said something in return, and her eyes flicked to Farah before the man reassured her and pointed her out the window. She perched on the windowsill, screwed her eyes shut, and jumped.

When Kaz was secure, the man shouted across to the Nectamia again, then turned to Kaz. "Sorry, kid, you're gonna have to do that, too."

Kaz nodded, his face pale and sweat-slicked in the firelight reflected off the Nectamia. The man helped him swing his injured leg over the windowsill. With a last reassuring smile for Farah, he pushed himself forward and dropped out of sight. Farah and the man looked up sharply as something crashed down in the hallway above the stairs. The glass on the floor cascaded towards the back of the room.

"Alright, we're out of time," said the man, then extended an arm towards Farah. "Grab onto me, kid."

Farah's body locked up. She fished desperately through the mindspace for any sign that the man planned to drop her, but found only her own fear reflected back at her. He pitied her. Running forward, Farah threw both arms around his neck and felt a powerful arm clamp across her back to hold her there. When they were both perched on the windowsill, the man gripped his rope tether and simply tipped back.

They fell.

Farah's stomach went airborne. She buried her face in the man's shoulder as the wind battered them from all sides, its whoosh building to a scream until the drag of the rope caught them. Gravity increased sharply as their arc reached its bottom. Farah clung tighter. The man too strengthened his hold. Their next pendulum swing was cut short by the roar of airship engines overhead, as the Nectamia banked sharply and towed them out of reach of the fire.

Farah looked back. The Ariomma was ablaze. Every ring and girder of its metal skeleton was picked out against a backdrop of billowing flame, which bloomed and bloomed again into the night. The Ariomma had entered the airship equivalent of freefall. Like a sinking ship, it accelerated downwards, a fall too graceful to be a plunge, but too certain to be anything but a death spiral. All of Farah and Kaz's remaining possessions were on that ship. But they were alive.

The drag on the rope lessened as the Nectamia cut its engines. Farah returned her face to her rescuer's shoulder. The whine of a winch began above them, drawing them upwards into the belly of their rescuing ship. A dozen hands helped pull them on board. Farah did not realize how weak her knees had gone until she tried to stand.