Perilous Journey of the Much-Too-Spontaneous Girl (15 page)

Except that the wind blowing her toward her mark was also blowing her mark away from her. She pulled hard on the rudder, and then remembered it was broken. She pushed with all her strength on the throttle. It kicked in a bit more power, but not enough. If she was lucky, she would make it to the aft deck—but only just. As she drifted helplessly, the wind picked up again. A huge gust blowing her higher in the air and forward in the right direction. She shoved on the rudder again. This time, something clanked, and it gave way sending her soaring a good fifty feet higher than was necessary.

“Oh, merciful gears!” She cried out as the chute deflated in the upward motion and she began to plummet again. Her engine continued to spit out full power, pushing her forward, but the chute wasn’t catching now. She was rocketing straight for the giant black envelope of the Renegade.

Marguerite quickly inspected the round hull of her ship and counted her lucky stars. There was a chance she wouldn’t puncture the giant bag of explosive gasses, but only a small chance. She held on tightly and closed her eyes as the black balloon rushed up to meet her tiny wooden capsule and her bottom left the decrepit seat again.

This is it,
she thought.
This is how I die.

But impact was not as explosive as she’d feared. In fact, it was quite lovely. She sank deep into the giant oval shaped balloon and was instantly bounced back into the aether. It was an exaggerated copy of the way it had felt to jump on her father’s bed when she was a child. She would land on her backside and rocket back into the air, landing on her feet on the floor. Only, this time, she felt her chute catch the wind again as she arched up and began to soar back down toward the sea. She had just enough time to catch her breath and open her eyes before she realized that she had been too liberal with her throttle and the
Renegade
was now nowhere in sight. Instead, the patchwork riggings of a pirate ship were dead ahead.

“Clogged cogs and steaming cylinders!” She yelled out loud and covered her face. Even though the chute slowed her descent, she was still coming in too fast. It was not going to be a soft landing. The aerdinghy hit the rigging, just above the deck on the smaller of the three pirate ships. Marguerite hit the controls of her dingy with a loud
crunch, and
the ship ricocheted off the ropes and posts and then hit the actual deck. Marguerite heard another loud
whack
and the sound of wood splintering as she was thrown about her tiny cockpit like a wet noodle in an autocart spoke.

A few more
whacks
and
clangs
and a final, nasty knock on the head, and Marguerite and her ship came to a sudden stop, leaving her bruised and bleeding and dizzy. Her head felt like someone had boxed it repeatedly with a monkey wrench, and she had somehow managed to land upside down.

Rough hands grabbed her and shoved her harness slack as they unhooked it; then they dropped her unceremoniously to the ruined deck floor. A piece of splintered wood jammed into her side, and she cried out in pain. “It’s one of them she-fliers!” a voice cried out. “Get her up and outta here.” Marguerite realized suddenly that these were not the strange voices of foreign corsairs, but English-speaking men with British accents.

While the British had always groped and fought over the best French tutors for their children, believing fluent French was a sign of culture and sophistication, the French never bothered with learning English. To Marguerite it sounded short and clipped, an ugly language lacking emotion. Still, she enjoyed reading some of the English authors in their original texts, and occasionally there was an interesting article published on engineering in England, so she’d taken the time to learn enough to understand. But she wasn’t anywhere near fluent enough to bargain her way out of this mess.

A loud man barked next to Marguerite’s ear as he pulled her to her feet.

“Send word to Captain Douleur. We’ll throw her in the brig till we get orders. In the meantime, clean this blooming mess up!” Her head throbbed, and her vision was still blurry, but things were starting to come into focus. Whoever was supporting her took her by both arms now and held her in front of him.

“Ain’t you a pretty little suicider then? Musta done something stupid, or you’re just plain crazy, to be assigned the first strike against the meanest pirate rig in the Atlantic. Eh?” She blinked at him and tried to make out his face. Her goggles were still firmly in place, however, and she realized one reason she couldn’t see was because they were fogged up with the foul breath of the man examining her.

“Those is nice glasses you got there. I think I’ll have them for me self.” He reached out and plucked the goggles from her face and looked them over carefully. Marguerite could see clearly now. He was a hulking British man covered in soot and grease; hair cut short—a sure sign of recent lice. She shuddered and stood on her own two feet. She tried to shake off the dizziness. Her knee and her shoulder ached, but she was fairly certain nothing was broken.

“Captain says she’s taking us in. Battle’s on boys! To your stations!” The man had let go of Marguerite and was now trying to shove the goggles onto his own massive head, but he only succeeded in getting them pinched onto his brow. “What do I do with her?”

“Tie her to the mainsail and get to work! We’ll use the parts from her ship in the catapult. Them Frenchies are going to regret the day they took us on!” A great cry went up from the men all around her. The big man pulled Marguerite, stumbling, toward a post that traveled up into the envelope of their ship. She couldn’t help but think what an interesting design it was but her thoughts were jerked back to the present as he yanked her arms behind her and around the pole then started fastening them with a rope.

This was a disaster, an absolute and complete disaster. All the warnings Jacques gave her about what buccaneers did to women began to flood her mind. Even obscure tales she read as a child of tongues being torn out and bodices ripped open raced through her thoughts and bludgeoned her heart. She had to stay calm. She had to think. Panicking would only get her killed. “Ah!” she cried out in pain as the pirate yanked too hard on her arm, in turn hurting her throbbing shoulder.

“Come on, Jo!” another man cried. “I need you on the ship cudgel!”

“Right, I’m coming!” He hurried with her knot and then grinned in her face. “Don’t worry pretty little French lovey, I’ll be back for you in a jiff.”

Marguerite shuddered and watched as her beloved goggles trotted away on top of the oaf’s head. The ship began flying some sort of maneuver. It spun around and flanked its sister ship. The deck crew made quick work of her wreck, tossing any bulky, unusable pieces overboard and organizing the rest near rustic catapults. Other men brought up buckets of goopy liquid and set them next to the catapult operators.

Marguerite looked out beyond the scene in front of her and saw the
Renegade
was closing in quickly, with its razor sharp battering bow. The rest of the King’s ships stayed behind as the
Renegade
flew directly at what appeared to be the main pirate ship, right in the middle. But the pirates made quick work of the situation, maneuvering up and around the
Renegade
, like a matador dodging a massive, flying bull.

The air was filled with auto pigeons carrying notes back and forth between the warships. Each ship had wireless telegraph, but there was no telling if the pirates could intercept the transmissions. The birds were much more secure and reliable in a close battle like this.

Marguerite would have been fascinated by everything happening around her, except that she kept trying to wiggle her hands free, and was completely unsuccessful. Watching the ships square off to fight while she kept at her ropes, she realized that the
Renegade
was going to miss its target and was now trying to regain footing as the pirates prepared to fire on her when she passed.

Air cannons roared through the driving winds and men stood at the ready, dipping debris in the buckets of liquid and securing it to catapults. As the
Renegade
drew near, she could see the crew of its deck making similar preparations. Then a man aboard the ship Marguerite was tied to brought out a torch and walked along the line, lighting each catapult’s load on fire as they aimed toward the
Renegade

“Oh, grease and gears,” Marguerite swore. Fire was just about the worst thing you could have hit an aership. She willed the crew of the
Renegade
to see the smoke and glowing flames and steer clear.

Her thoughts were answered by Jacques’ vessel making a quick bank to the right, away from the ship she was on, and a blast of cannon fire from the aft of the
Renegade
. The pirates returned fire, but it was too late. Their flaming scraps of rubbish drifted harmlessly to the ocean below as cannon blasts rocked the boat out of position. Marguerite jerked and shook with the vessel she was tied to, but in her heart she cheered for her shipmates.

Her shipmates. Outil and Jacques. What had she done? Where were they? How would they get out of this mess she’d caused? It worked once, so she tried again, willing the
Renegade
to turn and leave with the rest of the armada. She could figure out these pirates on her own. Maybe she could even steal a ship and fly back, catch up? “Oh crusty custard,” she swore again. No matter how stupid she was, or how terrible the peril she’d caused, she knew Jacques and Outil would never leave her. They had seen her stupid dingy land on the pirate deck and even if they didn’t know she was flying it, Jacques wouldn’t leave a man behind. Even if they did leave her behind, she knew deep in her heart that she probably wouldn’t have the will to fight on anyway.

She wallowed in self-pity until she saw another of the French warships break off from the pack, safely gliding away from the fight to circle the battle at an unbelievable speed. It was smaller than the
Renegade
, sleek and shining silver in the morning light, but it didn’t have the obvious weaponry of the
Renegade
either. Still, it was wicked fast and tore around the pirates, blocking their maneuvers.

Now that the small ship had cut them off, Jacques fired up his surplus motors and surprised the farthest ship out with his own burst of speed. The razor sharp tip of reinforced brass raced right for the hull of the smaller ship. Deck hands scurried to retreat, but it was too late. The huge spike ran right through the center of the body of the wooden ship.

The noise of metal and wood crashing together carried over the high winds to all in earshot. The smaller ship stayed lodged on the spear of the
Renegade
like a sausage recently forked for dinner. Men cursed and scurried to reload their now empty weapons. Marguerite stared in wonder. She’d assumed the sharp points were meant for puncturing envelopes, but she supposed this worked as well.

The smaller, faster French ship spun to attention and flew to the
Renegade
’s aid as the remaining pirate ships did the same—only not to help. The pirates raised red flags on all three ships. Marguerite had read enough to know this was a bad sign. It meant they were out for blood; no survivors would be taken. Her ship turned and sailed toward the
Renegade
as well. Marguerite guessed that these pirates thought they would fly up alongside the huge warship and blast it, maybe even board it, and have the day. But even with her short time on the ship, she knew there was enough fire power on the
Renegade
to take out several little scrap metal fliers like the one she was on, fire or no fire.

The small French ship flew to the envelope of the skewered pirate ship and tied on, a prime position to tap the gasses and leave it hanging helplessly until its weight pulled it to the ocean and beyond. As the pirates with their red flags drew nearer, the
Renegade
threw up its white flag, calling for negotiations. The men around her cheered, “They surrender!”

The man who appeared to be in charge struck out at the closest of his deck mates and clocked him good in the face. “You idiot, that’s not a flag of surrender; that means they want to talk. They’ve got us by the gears right now. One poke from that little ship up there and the entire crew of the
Lolly
will be shark food.”

“Well, what we going to do now?” asked another man.

“We wait till Captain Douleur makes a move. If the red flag stays, we attack, if she flies the white, then we gots to sit back and wait till they be done talking.”

Marguerite watched as the main ship drew nearer. The ship she was on was now close enough for the men on either vessel to give each other dirty looks. Side by side, the
Renegade
was obviously the far superior ship. She searched for Outil’s face, or even Jacques’s, but couldn’t see them among the deckhands. They were probably on the bridge.

Someone on the
Renegade
spotted her and cried out. “They’ve got one of our own tied to the main sail!” She realized she was still wearing her French flight suit. It was the first time she felt grateful for it since the scratchy thing had been issued.

“Call the captain!” Another man on the
Renegade
called out. “He’ll want to know!”

Oh, I bet he’ll want to know.
Marguerite thought.

“Truce!” a pirate called out in English.

She looked to the largest of the pirate ships, and sure enough, the red flag was gone and a white flag was taking its place. All she had to do now was wait. She tried to sink down to her bottom. Standing against the pole was becoming very tiresome, and her leg still ached from the crash. Men ran around her in all directions, preparing for whatever came next. Some had weapons drawn, some ale. Some were laughing while others looked fierce, ready for blood. As she slid down the pole, she wiggled her hands and twisted them around again, hoping the new angle would provide better leverage for slipping free.

She was right. The bony part of her left hand popped against the tight rope. Pain shot up her arm and brought tears to her eyes, but her hand slipped out of the tight ropes providing space to release the other hand as well.