Airship City

Chapter 38

IONE

By the time she reached the two of them, Joseph was already standing, looking a bit shaky, although Blake was still lying flat on the deck, cheek bleeding from a graze. He stared at her balefully as she raised the gun.

“You don’t know how to use that, remember?”

She clicked the safety off. “I do now.” She’d realised what the lever next to the hammer was for. Blake tightened his mouth, but remained otherwise motionless.

Joseph smiled broadly at her, and made as if to approach her. She shifted her aim to cover him. “Don’t even think about it, Joseph.”

The shock on his face seemed almost genuine. “What do you mean? I was just going to join you!” He gestured at Blake. “I stopped him running away, remember?”

She shook her head. “No. You were trying to join him, and messed up your… flying, or whatever that was you were doing. You knocked him over by accident.”

“No, Ione, that’s not true! Well, it probably was an accident, but I wasn’t trying to join him—“

“Shut up, Joseph!” The hurt from his betrayal came out as furious anger. “I don’t want to hear your lies anymore! You brought those… detonators onto Aeropolis, you offered to help Blake before, and now you’re trying to help him to escape. On that ship.” She gestured at the dilapidated ship standing about a hundred yards away. “But I’m not going to let you.”

As if on cue, the engines of the ship started up, and then she struggled laboriously into the air. Blake watched her go, then closed his eyes, seeming to deflate. But Joseph continued to look at her with his hurt, confused eyes. It was really annoying.

“But you saw me attack Vanross, when he admitted killing my father—“

“I said, be quiet!” She frowned. She didn’t fully understand why Blake had had him tied up, and had admitted killing Joseph’s father. But it must have been some sort of trick to confuse her when she suddenly showed up, so that Blake could overpower her. She was saved from further consideration of the difficulty by the arrival of Thornton and his troopers.  Two of them covered Joseph and Blake as Thornton himself approached cautiously.

“What’s going on here, Ione?”

Without taking her eyes off the two wrongdoers, she explained all that had happened in the gas envelope access corridors. When she had described the detonators and what Blake had done with them, Thornton held up his hand and called a trooper over. After receiving orders given to him in low, urgent tones, the man turned and ran back to the Core. Then Thornton turned back to her.

“I understand why you are holding Vanross. But what has Joseph done?”

She narrowed her eyes. “He brought the detonators onto Aeropolis.”

Thornton turned to Joseph. “Is this true?”

Joseph gave him a stricken look, then dropped his gaze, and nodded.

“All right, we’ll take it from here.” He turned to a tall trooper whose hair was nothing more than blond stubble. “Cole, take Mr Vanross and Master Samson to the brig, please. Ione, I think I’d better have that pistol now.”

She turned to face him, handed him the gun, and then stalked off without a backward glance. She wasn’t really crying. It was just the wind on deck, making her eyes water.