War Girls (The Juniper Wars Book 5) by Aaron Ritchey (find a book to read TXT) 📗

“Out! Now!” I screamed at Peeperz.

Guns from the massive Heartbreaker opened up and splashed lead.

The first part of our plan was finished, and the minute I climbed up out of the turret, it was blown away under me from some kind of rocket.

Pain slapped my thigh. A piece of shrapnel snagged into my leg. I grabbed it, and it was big enough to get a good hold on it. Pulling it out nauseated me and left me trembling. My fingers still felt the rattle of the machine guns. I let the bloody metal drop to the roof of the grain elevator.

No time to tend to the wound. If it was deep and I bled to death, well, sorry world. Sorry Wren. Sorry all you Gammas and all your mamas that loved you when you were human.

I clambered up the ladder out of to the turret as fast as I could. Banging and clanging echoed through the shaking zeppelin.

In my mind’s eye, I could see what was happening. The Americans on the Heartbreaker had thrown out their rope bridges and were connecting the Heartbreaker to the Moby, to come and get at us. If we were lucky, they’d empty out the entire barracks.

Climbing the ladder, the haversack slapped heavily across my back. I didn’t pause at the door that led to the bay. I thought of the auxiliary firebox and again hoped my calculations were correct.

Then I smiled at what my note on the battery said. When they finally read it, they’d understand my dastardly scheme.

And it would be too late for them to do a damn thing to stop me.

(ii)

Cold stars cut diamonds into the black night hiding. Me and Peeperz were on the very top of the Moby’s canopy, on top of the Kevlar reinforced plastic and the air cells underneath us. The Heartbreaker had a searchlight, a burning magnesium ribbon focused through a Fresnel lens giving them a Juniper searchlight. The spitting light slashed across the side of the Moby Dick.

The spitting circle of light seemed like the same technology the ARK had used on their zeppelins when they’d searched for us at night along I-70 in Utah. Was the Heartbreaker an ARK blimp?

Two rope bridges connected the zeppelins. We watched the American troops storm through into the cargo bay below us.

I shouldered the harpoon gun, a barbed spearhead connected to a spool of neofiber cable.

Putting the crosshairs above a hatch in the canopy of the Heartbreaker, I pressed the trigger. The spear soared across the sky, and the cable spun out of the whirring spool until the spearhead slammed into the zeppelin across from us.

The spool unhooked from a housing in the gun, allowing us to hook it around a clawed tie-off on the very top of the zeppelin.

“Looks like we have ourselves an old-fashioned zipline,” I said. “If I go first, you gonna follow me?”

“Don’t have much of a choice.” Sweat slickened his face. While his eyes were wide, his mouth was small.

I always wondered how Mama could’ve raised us around Outlaw Warlords, why she had kept me near her with the fight with Queenie. Now, I knew. No choice. The world sometimes asked us to risk the lives of children.

“It’s not right,” I muttered.

“It’s not, but you go on,” Peeperz said.

The haversack had a clip that I snapped onto the line. I sent it over. Then I looped a handled length of chain over the line and stepped off the zeppelin. Couldn’t think about it or I’d freak myself out. And I had to show the kid I wasn’t afraid when in fact my mouth was both dry and filled with the foul taste of my fright.

Dangling off that chain, my arms burned as I slid down the zipline.

If I fell, I wouldn’t fall on the grain elevators, but would plummet all the way to the ground three hundred meters below. I’d wanted suicide back at the electric fence—what a waste that would’ve been. Death sniffed at my breath over and over. He’d only have to wait until I ran out of luck.

Noiselessly, the metal chain slipped down the plastic cabling, light weight neofiber, what the bones of the zeppelins were made of. A miracle material as strong as titanium.

Just when I thought my arms would tear loose from their sockets, I bounced off the envelope of the Heartbreaker. Then I found some footing; my arms were grateful for the rest. The hatch opened easily enough. It was near the top and used only for maintenance. They could’ve locked it from the inside, but they didn’t.

I unclipped the haversack and stepped away from the entrance and motioned for Peeperz to come along.

He had his own chain looped around the cable, but he was looking down at the fall, freaking himself out.

Couldn’t wait for him.

From the haversack, I snatched up a flare and snapped the igniter. It sputtered and spit for a second, then caught in furious flame. In the spitting red glare, I saw the communication tubes. Into them, I screamed, as loud as I could, “We need a pilot on the Moby Dick. Now. We need one now! Everyone needs to go over. We found something.”

I abruptly stopped, hoping that I’d ignited their curiosity if not their fear.

I drew a pistol and then shot off a round into the pipes. I then popped another flare and shoved it into the communication tubes.

The sulfur swept into my face. I screamed into the pipes, “We have a fire. Abandon ship! Get to the Moby! Everyone! Abandon ship! Abandon ship!”

A quick glance to the hatch revealed Peeperz still on the Moby’s envelope. He hadn’t gone. If he stayed, he’d die, and I couldn’t stop it.

Below I watched as another retinue of soldiers crossed the bridge. Oh, how I hoped they’d emptied the Heartbreaker.

I sped down a ladder and into a corridor. At intervals I dropped road flares, smoking up the place. At every tube, I screamed about the fire.