Sail finally got up off the floor, the emotional mixture of sadness and anger propelling her movement. Her whole body was pounding, but especially her head. Nothing felt real. A flood of tears rolled down her face, accompanied by the same heartbroken screaming that had overtaken Cog earlier in the exact same room.
Two questions kept recurring over and over in her head: Why him? How did I survive? The bullet went straight through him, yet never touched her. Why?
A glimpse of his wrist answered her question.
His watch, a Tag brand novelty with a sleek gunmetal finish, still ticked for every second that passed, even though the bullet was caught in the glass window. She shakily removed his watch, trembling with every movement, and turned it in her hand. In the small unbroken segment of glass, her reflection stared back at her.
Next, her anger kicked in. She felt passionate fury and regret bubble up inside of her, and she balled the watch up in her fist. This was his watch, and he was hers. Somebody was going to pay for what happened to him, and she knew exactly who it was going to be. It was against her nature to go without revenge.
She walked over to one of her rescuers and asked if they were ready to unleash a quick and painful attack on their enemies. Without waiting for an answer, she spun the steering wheel hard to the right. The Globetrotter tugged and pulled against the massive weight of the Mumba, threatening to break all the wires that attached the two ships together. Everything they had been working on in Airship Operation to avoid jerking or overheating the airship went straight out the window.
One of the wires snapped as a German squad was marching over it, sending them plummeting to the shadowy ground beneath. Cog watched as the Globetrotter pulled harder and harder away, snapping the wires that would be their only way back.
"Sail!" she yelled, knowing she'd never be heard.
"It is a fruitless task, mademoiselle," the French one said. "We will have to get back ourselves."
"Well, I believe we have a bit of an issue with that right now," the British one pointed out, referring to the two ships now resting inside of the Mumba.
The last wire cracked against the side of the Globetrotter, and the ship violently recoiled from the exerted force. Sail rushed over to the PA again. "We are now fully detached from the A.S. Mumba. No more Nazis will be boarding. The next plan of action is to activate our shields and get out of here. I'm still turning on the cannons, though, because I have a newfound hatred for Nazis. If they fire at us, return fire." Her last sentence came out more angrily than the rest.
She rotated the ship to get a good view of the Mumba. The sheer size of it caught her off-guard. They were very close to it, but either side of the ship was out of her peripherals. She wiped the last tear out of her eye and was just about to turn away when she saw Cog and two other people disappearing into the enemy airship.
"Oh my God," she shouted. "Cog!"
"What now?" Cog wondered, cautiously checking both directions. They had made a way into the airship, but its foreign hallways only provided more dangers. Instead of the decorative wood walls and paintings on the Globetrotter, they were met with steel plates bolted together, and Nazi propaganda posters.
"We have to seem like we belong here," the British one figured, loading a pistol. "You have a knife. Hopefully, you can be a quick and silent killer. Sneak up on a Nazi and disguise yourself with their clothing. Meet back here, and we'll have a map and the location of a possible secondary airship we can escape with."
YOU ARE READING
The Steam War (The Steam War #1)
Science Fiction"Secrets don't keep once they're airborne." On board the Globetrotter, a steampunk flight school for aspiring airship crews, Cog and her closest friends gear up for their third year of classes. But when a mysterious transfer student threatens to roc...
