"What a monument of folly," the Patriarch snarled, wheezing and out of breath as he and his crusaders, as he called them, finally found their way up to the platform where they'd seen the airship take off. They'd lost their way two or three times in doing it, in this castle of devilry!
"Quickly," he shouted to his monks and followers, "Find the highest vantage points! We must find out which way they are going!"
As the men ran out across the metallic courtyard with its bizarre machinery, shots rang out. Most of the men scattered. One spun round and raised his pistol toward the control room seemingly built into the rock wall behind. Another snarl of fire, and the pistoleer spasmed, spun backward and collapsed. The Patriarch turned, holy fire in his eyes, and bellowed, "You will pay for that, infidel!"
"You come into my factory complex, you prate about it as if it were not a glorious monument of the People, and call me infidel for defending it from bandits like yourselves?"
"I am the Patriarch of Romansbourg," the Patriarch roared back, "And we are on a holy crusade to vanquish a conniving whore, who spits in the face of God and gives succor to those who live as beasts outside of His grace! As for plundering your palace of machines," the Patriarch sneered, "It seems to me very much as though you are powerless to prevent that anyway!"
The man, in red and wearing a face-covering leather mask of some sort, froze, his gun unmoving. "You are pursuing Kate Walker?"
"What do you know of her," the Patriarch demanded.
"I know that that interloping American harpy stole from me, and destroyed one of the monuments of my factory complex! Now she has escaped me, and taken an airship, property of the State!"
"Then, perhaps," said the Patriarch, his voice becoming more calm and thoughtful, "We can make...common cause."
He didn't make a great effort to disguise the distaste for this idea, but after a moment's pause, Borodin lowered his assault rifle and said, "Agreed."
"Excellent," the Patriarch grinned a skull-like grin. "Now, our train lacks fuel and the tracks are blocked. Will you help us?"
"I doubt I have fuel for your train, and it would take days to clear the tracks," Borodin said.
"Then in God's name, what..." the Patriach began, but Borodin interrupted.
"But I believe I have something even better."
"We're losing altitude," Boris remarked. It was evening now, and the rocky, snowblown grasslands and wooded marshes of Eastern Europe passed by below.
"Do you know why," Kate asked.
"Probably we copped a bullet through the dirigible," Boris said grimly. "It's not fast, so it's probably a small leak, but we'd better get across this wall soon if we don't want to walk the last stretch!"
"I have only a half dozen rounds left," Emeliov said, patting the pocket that held his revolver. "We would be wise to avoid another fight."
"I certainly agree," Kate said with feeling. She looked back out over the landscape and said, "Look, there, it's the Barrockstadt Wall!"
"Oh, good," Boris said with relief. "I hate these lumbering gas bags. Give me a jet or a rocket any day."
"Oh, bad," Emeliov sighed. "I think we have a problem."
"Another one," Kate sighed. "Of course." She spoke lightly to hide the creeping foreboding this announcment provoked.
Emeliov was sitting in the back of the cabin, and looking out with his binoculars. "Have a look," he said, handing them to Kate.
She took a second to zero in on what he was seeing, but the ripped up turf and churning ponds eventually led her to the cause. It was a low, caterpillar-tracked vehicle, painted in gunmetal grey, and covered in little hatchways. Heads were poking out of several of them, arms bracing rifles on the hull. One of them with the Patriarch, and it seemed for a moment as if he was looking straight at Kate with those fevered eyes. And on the back of the vehicle, standing up in a rooftop hatch of some sort, was Sergei Borodin, wielding his assault rifle.
"Oh, god," Kate exclaimed, "is that a tank?"
"Nyet, Miss Walker," Emeliov sighed. "It is a BTR-D Armoured Personnel Carrier."
"They actually left one of those behind in the complex," Boris exclaimed.
"At least they had the sense to remove its cannon," Emeliov said.
"We've got to go faster," Kate said. "Boris, let's see what we can do here."
Boris rousted beckoned to Emeliov, and, with difficulty, he managed to give Boris a boost up to the hatchway in the roof. He dropped it open, cursed the lack of a ladder, and climbed up into the rumbling cavernous space above. After a minute or two clumping around up there, he said, "Ah! This drive gear is almost stripped! Small wonder we're not getting the power from the engine to the props!"
"Can you do anything?"
"I can overdrive the engine, make up for the loss. But it'll strip the gear that much faster!"
"Well, better that than coming down on the wrong side of the wall," Kate said.
"True enough," Boris said.
Kate hastened to the back of the compartment. Down the length of the airship, she saw the propellors begin to spin faster, and faster still. Boris dropped back into the compartment a minute later, his hands smeared with grease, "That's done it! Don't know how long it'll hold, though!"
"Okay," said Kate, "Here's hoping we can stay in the air that long!"
A loud impact made one of the windows of the gondola shatter, and all three travellers ducked briefly.
"This really is not going well," growled Col. Emeliov.
"We not going to make it," Boris groaned.
"Nobody panic," said Kate, suddenly sharp. "Look, that moldy old cleric couldn't catch me and Hans when all I had was an emtpy coffin and a snowy hillside to work with. We've got a whole airship!"
"Well," Emeliov conceded, looking at Boris, "It is a useful advantage, control of the air, is it not, Comrade Charnov?"
"The best advantage," Boris agreed. More shots rattled off the gondola's hull. Boris rubbed his hands together, "We need to maneuver, as much as we can. And I don't think that automaton's designed for evasive flying."
"Then Boris, tell me what to do!" Kate snapped.
Boris stared at Kate for a moment. She planted her hands on her hips and looked right back into his ragged, scruffy, bloodshot-eyed face. And he looked for a moment at his trembling hands, and said, "Okay, Kate." He went to the controls and pulled a lever. The automaton took its hands off the wheel and it slid back on some kind of railing out of the way.
Kate nodded and grinned at Boris, "Thank you, Comrade."
Kate took the wheel, and said, "Okay, how do I fly evasively?"
"Start with weaving around," Boris said, "S-pattern. Emeliov, boost me back up into the machine room, and then you can keep and eye on their position."
"What are you going to do," Emeliov said, nevertheless complying to assisting Boris back into the crawlspace above.
"Try and keep us airborne." With that, he clambered out of sight.
Kate, meanwhile, twiddled the wheel and felt the ship lean into the turns. She also felt it drop noticeably.
It took a depressingly short time before Emeliov, in the back of the gondola, cried, "Veer hard right! Hard right!"
Kate nearly fell over, startled by the responsiveness of the steering. A series of distant gunshots reached them through the broken window, but there was no impact or damage. Kate laughed with relief, then she started scanning the advancing wall. She turned back to the right slightly.
"Miss Walker, that's not a good idea."
"Maybe not," Kate said, "But it's the right way: I see the gate! Boris, can we get any more speed?"
"No way," Boris said, "This is as good as it..."
"Left," cried Emeliov.
Kate turned, but she didn't dare deviate too far from the gate. The airship lurched forward, and there was a whoosh of gas.
"We're hit, the gasbag's burst," Emeliov said.
"We're going faster," cried Kate.
"Darn right," Boris laughed from up above. "They ruptured the gas bag aft! It's acting like a rocket engine!"
"Please tell me this isn't a hydrogen airship," Emeliov said.
"Helium," Boris said indignantly, "Do I sound German to you?"
"We're going down," Kate cried. They might not fall short, but then, they might hit the wall too.
"Down!" Emeliov yelled, and then the windows at the back of the gondola exploded. They'd dropped low enough to be easy prey for the gunmen chasing them. Kate dove for the floor, but almost the moment she'd hit it, the incoming fire stopped. Kate scrambled back up, looking the forward windows.
"Hold on!" Kate yelled.
The airship just clipped the top of the Barrockstadt Wall. Struggling to keep her balance, Kate heaved on the steering wheel, and the airship belly-flopped onto the scrubby grass between the University building's wing and the canal that ran alongside the railway. The cracked windows shattered, metal screeched, and the stink of burning oil filled the air.