Read Predator's Gold for Free Online Page A

emergency!” Hester told the radio. “We’re being chased!”
    “We know,” the voice came back, regretful but firm. “We want no trouble. Novaya-Nizhni is peaceable city. Keep clear, please, or we fire upon you.” A rocket from the lead Fox Spirit came winding in to burst just off the stern. The harsh voices of the Green Storm aviators drowned out the threats from Novaya-Nizhni for a moment, then the woman was back, insisting, “Stay clear, Jenny Haniver, or we will fire!”
    Tom had an idea.
    There was no time to explain to Hester what he was about to do. He didn’t think she would approve anyway, since he had borrowed this manoeuvre from Valentine; from an episode in Adventures of a Practical Historian, one of those books he had thrilled to back in his apprentice days, before he found out what real adventures were like. Spewing gas from her dorsal vents the Jenny dropped into the path of the oncoming city and went powering forward on a collision course. The voice on the radio rose to a sudden scream, and Hester and Pennyroyal screamed too as Tom steered the ship low over the rusty factories on the brim of the middle tier and drove her between two enormous supporting pillars into the shadow of the tier above.
    Behind him, two of the Fox Spirits pulled up short, but the leader was bolder, and followed him into the heart of the city.
    This was Tom’s first visit to Novaya-Nizhni, and it was rather a fleeting one. From what he could see, the city was laid out in much the same way as poor old London, with broad streets radiating out from the centre of each tier. Along one of these the Jenny Haniver raced at lamp-post height, while shocked faces gaped down at her from upper windows and pedestrians scattered for cover on the pavements. Near the tier’s hub loomed a thicket of support-pillars and elevator shafts, a slalom-course through which the little airship slipped with inches to spare, grazing her envelope and scraping paint from her steering vanes. The pursuing Fox Spirit was not so lucky. Neither Tom nor Hester saw quite what happened, but they heard the rending crash even over the roar of the Jenny’s engines, and the periscope showed them the wreckage crumpling towards the deck, the gondola swinging drunkenly from an overhead tramway.
    Out into sudden, blinding sunlight on the far side of the city. It seemed they had escaped, and even the petrified Pennyroyal cheered in the sudden rush of happiness that united them all. But the Green Storm did not give up so easily. The Jenny swung through the fog of exhaust smoke which hung behind the city, and in the clear air beyond the two remaining Fox Spirits were waiting.
    A rocket slammed into the starboard engines, the blast blowing out the flight-deck windows and flinging Hester to the floor. She scrambled up to find Tom still crouched over the controls, his hair and clothes frosted with powdered glass.
    Pennyroyal was slumped against the chart table with blood trickling from a gash on his bald head where one of the Jenny’s brass fire-extinguishers had struck him a glancing blow as it fell. Hester dragged him to a window seat. He was still breathing, but his eyes had rolled up until only two half-moons of white showed under the lids. He looked as if he was studying something very interesting on the inside of his head.
    More rockets struck. A buckled propeller-blade hummed past, whirling down towards the snowfields like a failed boomerang. Tom was still heaving at the controls, but the Jenny Haniver no longer obeyed him – either the rudders were gone, or the cables which operated them had been severed. A fierce gust of wind, howling through a gap in the mountains, swung her towards the Fox Spirits. The nearer of the two made a sudden move to avoid collision, and collided with her sister-ship instead.
    The explosion, barely twenty yards to starboard, filled the Jenny’s flight deck with a lurid glare. When Hester could see again the sky was full of tumbling litter.