Read Predator's Gold for Free Online

Tannhäuser Mountains barred the horizon ahead, their canyons and pumice-clouds offering the only hope of shelter.
    “What shall we do?” he asked.
    “Keep going,” said Hester. “Maybe we can lose them in the mountains.”
    “What if they rocket us?” whimpered Pennyroyal. “They’re getting terribly close!
    What if they start shooting at us?”
    “They want the Jenny in one piece,” Hester told him. “They won’t risk using rockets.”
    “Want the Jenny? Why would anyone want this old wreck?” The tension was making Pennyroyal tetchy. When Hester explained he shouted, “This was Anna Fang’s ship? Great Clio! Almighty Poskitt! But the Green Storm worship Anna Fang!
    Their movement was founded amid the ashes of the Northern Air Fleet, sworn to avenge the people killed by London’s agents at Batmunkh Gompa! Of course they’d want her ship back! Merciful gods, why didn’t you tell me this ship was stolen? I demand a full refund!”
    Hester shoved him aside and went to the chart table. “Tom?” she said, studying their maps of the Tannhäusers. “There’s a gap in the volcano-chain west of here: the Drachen Pass. Maybe there’ll be a city there we can put down on.” They flew on, climbing into thin air above the snowy peaks and once skirting dangerously close to a plume of smoke that belched thickly from the throat of a young volcano. No pass, no city did they see, and after another hour, during which the three Fox Spirits steadily narrowed their lead, a flight of rockets came flashing past the windows and exploded just off the starboard bow.
    “Oh, Quirke!” cried Tom – but Quirke had been London’s god, and if he couldn’t be bothered to save his own city, why would he come to the aid of a battered little airship, lost in the sulphurous updrafts of the Tannhäusers?
    Pennyroyal tried to hide under the chart table. “They are firing rockets!”
    “Oh, thanks, we wondered what those big explodey things were,” said Hester, angry that her prediction had proved wrong.
    “But you said they wouldn’t!”
    “They’re aiming for the engine pods,” said Tom. “If they disable them we’ll be dead in the sky and they’ll grapple alongside and send a boarding party across…”
    “Well, can’t you do something?” demanded Pennyroyal. “Can’t you fight back?”
    “We don’t have any rockets,” said Tom miserably. After that last terrible air battle over London, when he had shot down the 13th Floor Elevator and watched her crew burn inside their burning gondola, he had vowed that the Jenny would be a peaceful ship. Her rocket projectors had been empty ever since. Now he regretted his scruples. Thanks to him, Hester and Professor Pennyroyal would soon be in the hands of the Green Storm.
    Another rocket slammed past. It was time to do something desperate. He called again on Quirke, then swung the Jenny hard over to larboard and took her powering down into the maze of the mountains, flashing through the shadows of wind-carved basalt crags and out again into sunlight.
    And below him, far below him and ahead, he saw another chase in progress. A tiny scavenger town was scurrying southwards through a cleft in the mountains and behind it, jaws agape, rolled a big, rusty, three-tiered Traction City.
    Tom steered the Jenny towards it, glancing from time to time into his periscope, where the three Fox Spirits still hung doggedly on his tail. Pennyroyal gnawed at his fingernails and gibbered the names of obscure gods: “Oh, great Poskitt! Oh, Deeble, preserve us!” Hester turned the radio on again and hailed the fast-approaching city, demanding permission to dock.
    A pause. A rocket struck steam and splinters from a mountainside thirty yards astern. Then a woman’s voice crackled out of the radio, speaking Airsperanto with a heavy Slavic accent. “This is Novaya-Nizhni Harbour Board. Your request is denied.”
    “What?” screamed Pennyroyal.
    “But that’s not—” said Tom.
    “This is an