Read A City Called Smoke: The Territory 2 for Free Online Page A

out, you can ride in that as far as we’re going. S’got a mattress and all. We’ll be heading back out just as soon as this hold-up is over. All right with you?”
    Lynn looked up at the walls of Alice, contemplating whether or not she was making the right choice. She hoped she wasn’t abandoning any chance she had at justice for her father. She looked at Squid. For now she would go along with this ridiculous quest. She nodded to Bishop. “Perfect.”

CHAPTER 5
    Melbourne leaned his weight against the handle of the mop, gazing out over the rear of the dirigible, the stern as the crew would call it. He watched the black flag with the image of a red skull flap rhythmically from the short flagpole. Though other dirigibles may not know exactly which crew flew this particular flag, the general meaning would be obvious enough: pirates.
    The airship was in much better condition than Melbourne would have imagined a pirate ship to be. The large wooden body was in good repair. It was sturdy and creaked little as it hung from the balloon above. The propeller shafts were well oiled and spun smoothly as they drove the airship forward. Melbourne had overheard Captain Pratt, the tall red-bearded leader of the pirates, barking orders enough times to know how important he considered having a fast and quiet dirigible. The air bladders in the balloon above still flapped gently in the breeze but other than that the Blessed Mary was an eerily quiet vessel.
    From what Melbourne had been able to gather, Captain Pratt had named the ship after a Sister of Glorious God the Redeemer he’d once loved, or at least felt something for; Melbourne wasn’t precisely sure of their relationship, as Captain Pratt often referred to the dirigible as “his beautiful” while on other occasions he called it “a two-faced harpy.”
    The Blessed Mary was a large transport dirigible, or at least it had been before the current crew of buccaneers had claimed it for their own. Modifications had been made to the ship: hatches fitted for cannons along each side of the bulwark – the fence that bordered the top deck, and armour plating had been installed on the interior of the hull. It wouldn’t have surprised Melbourne if they’d altered the dirigible’s running gear too, because even with all the additional weight the airship seemed to be cutting through the air faster than most transports he’d seen coming and going from Alice or the Rock.
    It was home to a crew of thirty men who used it to roam the outer regions of the Central Territory, raiding small towns and plundering other transport dirigibles for their goods. Captain Pratt selected his targets wisely. He focused on minor transports, the type that ferried food and goods in and out of the remotest towns or to the mines that no one considered all that profitable. He never followed a pattern and was content to wait a long time and fly large distances between raids. He was careful to ensure his attacks wouldn’t draw too much attention from the Diggers and have them tracking him across the Territory in what would end, as it did for all pirates once the Diggers got too interested, in his death. This approach had meant that he and his crew had never struck it rich, but they were the longest-lasting crew of pirates in the Territory, a nuisance the Diggers seemed to put up with because they didn’t do too much damage. Now, though, since the Battle of Dust and the loss of practically every Digger in the Territory, the pirates of the Blessed Mary had changed tactics and turned inward toward the richer towns and main trading routes. The time had finally come, Melbourne heard Captain Pratt say, for their pay-off.
    After his thrilling escape from the ghouls, skilful survival when lost in the desert and then unlucky capture at the hands of the pirates, it had taken Melbourne a long time to come to terms with the news that the Diggers had been destroyed. At first he had been left feeling numb. This had been