He took off. Daphne yelled after him, and an attendant tried to stop him, but Danny took advantage of another rumble to sprint by.
He didn’t know why he was risking life and limb for a piece of metal. But just as he couldn’t control his dreams, he couldn’t control his actions, and only one thought blazed across his mind: I can’t lose my only connection to him.
As he rounded the corner, an explosion blew him off his feet. He landed hard on his shoulder with a loud pop. Groaning, Danny tried to get to his knees, but when he rolled over he gasped.
The explosion had ripped a hole in the Notus’s hull, taking out the cabin next to Danny’s. All that remained was a jagged window into the Indian evening, a soupy mix of blue, gray, and red. The wind stung his skin and tugged him toward the hole.
He scrambled to find something to grab onto, but the force of the wind dragged his body across the floor, and he shot outside with a scream. Even as he was falling, he searched for something, anything, until his fingers closed around a loose cable that had been rent free in the explosion. Danny dangled from the airship over a dark, barren stretch of ground, miles and miles from his feet.
He let out a dry sob. His shoulder ached, but he clung onto the cable for dear life, the wind whipping his clothes and hair.
He was going to die because he was an idiot who wanted to save a cog.
And if he died, then Colton …
The dull throb of gunfire split the air. The Notus shuddered each time it was hit, steadily losing altitude. He could barely feel his hands. His fingers slipped and he gripped the cable even tighter.
From the corner of his eye, he saw something move. A bulky figure was climbing down the side of the airship. The more he stared, the more Danny realized it was a person swaddled in a thick jacket. Hope flared hot and bright in his bruised chest. Someone from the crew, maybe, who knew he’d come this way.
The person climbed down a metallic rope that had been affixed somewhere on top of the Notus. When the person reached the hole, he swung inside without being sucked out through the hull; the ship must have repressurized.
It was then that Danny noticed his supposed rescuer wore dark goggles and a kerchief around the lower half of his face, and a gun strapped to his waist. As Danny watched, the person detached a length of canvas rope from his belt.
Danny could only hang there as the figure approached, his dark jacket flapping in the wind, the rope coil he held in one fist dancing like the head of a cobra.
At the end of the rope was a noose.
Danny scanned his surroundings for a way to escape, but the only way was down. The man knelt above Danny, ready to either lasso or hang him with it.
“Stop!” Danny yelled, kicking his feet ineffectively through the open air. “Don’t do this!”
To his surprise, the figure tossed the rope to him.
“Grab onto it,” the man ordered.
Danny clutched tighter to the cable. His fingers were past numbness.
“Grab hold of the rope!”
“Who are you?” Danny demanded. “Are you with the Notus?”
The man, losing patience, unstrapped his gun and pointed it at Danny’s face.
“Grab the rope!”
Danny couldn’t move. He hung there like a worm on a hook and stared at the dark lenses of his soon-to-be-killer’s goggles.
Before the man could pull the trigger, something collided with his head and he tumbled to one side. Daphne stood in his place, a length of pipe clutched tightly in her hands. She panted as the wind made a wild mess of her long hair.
“He has a gun!” Danny yelled.
She saw where it had fallen and kicked it out of the hole. It plummeted to the Indian plain below.
The man quickly leapt to his feet, but before he could round on Daphne, she smacked him again with the pipe and he lost his footing, following his gun out into the approaching night.
“Shit!” Danny watched the man fall. He was going to die.
But then the man threw something. A disc shot up into the clouds, trailing another metallic rope behind it. The man swung from the rope as he was pulled upward by an unseen force. He looked over at Danny, then flew out of sight.
Daphne dropped the pipe and reached for his hand. The rope had slithered out, so Danny had to pull himself up the cable before he could grab onto Daphne’s forearm. She steadied herself against the hull and heaved, face red, teeth bared.
Danny crawled back into the airship and scrambled to one side, away from the hole. He leaned against the wall, gasping hoarsely. Daphne’s own breaths were high and wheezing.
She looked out of the hole, and he followed her gaze. Another airship, larger than the Notus, with a high bridge at the front and a long, bulky body, rose up into the air. That was all Danny had time to notice; the ship was little more than a dark mass as evening fell in earnest, an ominous cloud climbing back into the sky. The other clouds swallowed it into their company.
When Danny and Daphne could move again, they hurried from the corridor toward the emergency aircrafts. Attendants shoved them into a small carrier ship with some of the soldiers, then latched the doors behind them.
Danny sat in a cold metal seat as he was strapped in. He couldn’t lift his arms.
An announcement was made. The engine started. They took off.
Something touched his thigh. It took all his effort to look down and see Daphne’s hand resting there.
“Danny,” she whispered. “Are you all right?”
I’m alive, he wanted to say, but no sound came out.
“What happened? Who was that?”
He couldn’t even shake his head. Daphne said that maybe he was in shock, but it was all right now. They’d be on the ground within minutes. He wanted her to be quiet; for everything to be as still and silent as he was.
As if his body heard the plea, he closed his eyes and passed out.
As the plane landed, he roused himself. Daphne hovered at his side, and an attendant came to take Danny’s pulse. She gave Danny two small, white pills.
Daphne eyed them distastefully. “Isn’t there anything else?”
“They’ll calm him.”
Danny was forced to swallow the pills, which scratched his throat on the way down. Others were getting out of the plane, grimly murmuring among themselves. A soldier said they were an hour’s drive from the military base. Another said help was coming.
Danny sat under the supervision of Daphne and the attendant. When they heard shouts coming from outside, he forced himself to stand. His legs were wobbly, but he had to see what was happening.
The Notus fell toward earth, but the captain had deployed an emergency balloon to inflate over the airship. It wasn’t enough to keep the ship in the air, but the balloon allowed it to drift slowly to the ground. A few smaller ships flew toward it from the direction of what Danny assumed was the nearby military base. They looked like birds of prey waiting for the mammoth to die.