War Girls (The Juniper Wars Book 5) by Aaron Ritchey (best short novels .TXT) 📕

again I used physics. If I could angle the light correctly, the Moby Dick would see the flash and the Heartbreaker wouldn’t. But there was still the problem of the women climbing up the ladder to search for the mysterious Willimina Carson.

Burned my fingers, but I got the lantern lit. The pain was distant, as the adrenaline flowed into my system and sharpened the world into fine points. I could smell the sulfur of the spent match, the water freezing in the old wood, my own smell, and Burlington’s battlefield smoke.

Going to a window, I gauged the angles, so the Moby Dick could see but not the Heartbreaker. I lifted and lowered the lantern’s hood in quick succession, flashing my name in Morse code.

Until I had to stop. The two guards had made it on top of the platform, shining lanterns of their own. Their light reflected off their machine guns. They’d search the place, sure they would, and they would’ve found me if I hadn’t been a daughter of Burlington.

I’d been up in Darla’s shack a dozen times before, and she’d shown me her loft where her nieces slept when they visited. I thought that had been the coolest thing ever in the history of the world. Sleeping on top of the zeppelin port? Awesome, pure and simple.

Blew out the lantern. Set it down. Then I scurried up pegs set into the wall, opened a trapdoor in the ceiling, crawled through, then closed it softly behind me. Up there looked like a place for Hindu sleepovers. Two mattresses lay on either side of the narrow space under bare wooden beams. Embroidered bedspreads covered both. At one end of the attic a little dresser was tucked up against the wall and on it were statues of Shiva dancing. Old pooja incense sticks lay burned out on wooden holders, a trace of their scent still hanging in the air.

Just as I closed the trapdoor, one of the peacekeepers strolled into the shack, shining the light around. Sure, the smell of my match and the hot lantern might get them curious, but did they know about the loft?

Sweat slid down my hair, down my forehead. I didn’t dare wipe my face ’cause I couldn’t make a noise, or I’d be found out.

I gritted my teeth and held my breath as my heart pounded thunderous. What if Peeperz didn’t see the women and dropped the ladder? What if he signaled back? Or he might not be in the Moby at all, and I was wasting everyone’s time.

I waited.

The light of their lantern swept through the cracks in the floor under me. But they were only doing a quick search, so they could honestly tell their C.O. they’d looked. It was nice dealing with humans for once and not the ARK’s creations.

Then the women were gone. I shifted over to peer through a crack in the boards of the attic and watched them descend the ladder.

Safe for the moment, I climbed down and crept to the doorway.

I thought about lighting the lantern to signal again, but I didn’t need to. A rope ladder fell through the mid-bay hatch out of the middle of the Moby.

Had to pump my fist and utter a quick, “Heck yeah!”

Peeperz had seen me. And he knew his Morse code.

Without a second thought, I sprinted from the shack, across the wooden walkway on top of the grain elevator and to the ladder. Clenching my stomach muscles, I scaled the rungs, rising farther and farther from the top of the grain elevator until I saw Peeperz. He helped me climb in and then we both grabbed the rope ladder and hauled it up as fast as we could.

In the darkness inside the Moby, we waited for several long minutes to see if we’d been discovered. When no alarms went off and no one shouted, we relaxed a bit. It all seemed miraculous.

The Moby was just one big cargo bay, a vast expanse with barrels tied to the walls; the cockpit was over in the nose in front of the hammocks. Above us floated the air cells inside the envelope. In the rear was the cargo door, the engine, and a portal to the crow’s nest above and the crow’s basement below.

“No guards in the Moby?” I asked.

He shook his head. “We’re impounded and hurt. They don’t think we could really go anywhere. They got our engines in the fight.” Peeperz had lost a great deal of weight. I’d not seen him since the battle at the Plainville Salvage Yards, where the Moby rode the border of the Juniper, sometimes using her steam engine and sometimes the Kung-Pao battery.

Peeperz was ten years old, maybe, and scars pinched his face, almost sealing his eyes shut. His mouth worked through the pinch. His eyes, though, still found kindness in the world, and he was given to laughter and a deep love for dogs.

Peeperz might be scarred on the outside, thanks to the Psycho Madelines and their boy-hate, but inside it seemed he’d weathered the worst of it. In a way, we were the exact opposite.

“How long have you been impounded up here?” I asked.

“Just today,” he whispered. “We flew in as air support for Mavis, but the U.S. got her other zeppelins. Hit us hard, but you know the Moby...she don’t go down easy. They captured Sketchy and Tech, but I got away and hid in the air cells, up above, in secret places.”

“Knew it,” I said. “’Cause you’re so smart.”

“Like you. Cavvy, do you gotta plan?”

“You know I do. And I know you won’t like it.” Glancing around the bay, remembering all the adventures I’d had in her, and all the scrapes she’d gotten us out of, my heart felt like bitter herbs in my chest. “But I’ll have to tell you anyway.”

After I got done talking, Peeperz wiped a tear from his cheek. “You’re right,” he said. “I don’t like it at all.”

Chapter Nine

AND SHE ANSWERED THEM, saying, "The hour