Storm Girls (The Juniper Wars Book 4), Aaron Ritchey [best beach reads txt] 📗

The right arm had also been damaged, but we’d survived the encounter. Aces hadn’t. That jackerdan was roasting in hell along with most of his Neanderthal followers.

The Audrey Hepburn stood next to us, waiting. Wren had grabbed Dutch so they could stab the zeppelin crew in the back once we hit them from the front.

Rachel had chosen to drive, which wasn’t so surprising. I had the idea her fighting days were behind her now that she could feel. Tibbs Hoyt had bio-engineered her, and the other Vixxes, without emotions, since he thought they were a liability. Maybe he was right, but more and more I saw feelings as powerful things that, if channeled correctly, could prove to be the ultimate weapon. Well, if one could control them. Rachel was still learning how to do that. So was I, for that matter.

Marisol was above her in the gunner’s seat. The shy, quiet girl had worked Audrey Hepburn’s guns before, during our big escape from Glenwood, so I was hoping she could do it again.

I glanced at the glow-in-the-dark hands of my Moto-Moto watch. The date function didn’t work anymore, but the clock did. We’d synchronized our watches. It was 12:51 am. At 1:00 am, we’d take the Stanleys down the hill, guns blazing.

It was a plan we’d done before, playing the killdeer, distracting our enemies so Wren could go in and do her damnedest to kill or be killed. Since she was nearly invulnerable after being dosed with the Gulo Delta, it’d prolly be the former and not the latter.

Dutch, on the other hand, was untested and a scoundrel to boot. I didn’t like him, but Wren loved him. Well, loved him, was scared of him, and hated him all at once. She’d said she didn’t know which she liked better, kissing him or smacking him.

Weird, but leave it to Wren to have such a love life.

Her real name was Irene, but Mama had made a mistake in naming her. Wren was a wren, born to fly ’cause sitting still hurt too much.

Poor Mama. Months dead now. Her heart had given out and we’d buried her. It nearly broke me. Did break Sharlotte. And Wren? Wren had told me Mama was dead with a smile on her face.

Bad history between Wren and Mama. Some kind of secret was there.

The minutes crept by. I closed my eyes to pray, but more and more I wasn’t sure if anything would listen to me. Being Catholic, though, was more about habit than belief at times, and so I prayed to God He’d watch over us, He’d deliver us from evil, and He’d forgive our many trespasses against His other creations.

Sure, the Cuius Regios had come out of a vat, but if they walked the earth, God had allowed it, and it made them a part of His divine plan.

If only He’d let us in on His schemes.

Another cheap “if only” not worth a green street penny.

Sharlotte’s voice punched through the tube. “It’s time, Cavvy. Let’s go get ’em.”

I swallowed and threw the sticks forward.

The Marilyn took off in a whoosh of pistons and the thunder of her big, cross-hatched metal feet pounding on the slushy mud of the road.

Another roll of the dice. Another battle in our war. Another chase to save the day or die trying.

(iii)

Sharlotte controlled the arms from up in the gunner’s seat. While the Marilyn’s right arm weapons didn’t work, we still had our left guns.

I controlled the legs and feet. The gauges for the steam engine glowed in front of me, the needles coated with phosphorescent paint. Behind me was an auxiliary hatch so I could feed fuel down into the firebox. A valve next to it allowed me to dump water into the engine, ’cause steam needs equal parts water and heat to keep the pistons pumping.

It was hard to see in the dark. The windshield kept getting clogged with snow; we had no windshield wipers and my breath kept icing up the inside. I tried rolling down both windows, and still I had trouble seeing anything. But I kept on heading toward the lights.

The Audrey Hepburn was right behind me.

Sharlotte triggered a rocket, and it went streaking through the darkness with a tail of sparks and light. It hit in front of the troops, which was okay; our job was to be the distraction while Wren and Dutch did the killing.

The Regios started firing at us. Their bullets pinged off the metal, sparking, and one cracked the lower left part of my windshield. Lucky for me the glass was bulletproof. Even luckier, the bullets shook off enough snow for me to see again. My engineer’s mind did ponder how much the grenade had compromised the glass’s integrity. I had to hope for the best.

Sharlotte returned fire, working the fifty-caliber machine gun on the left arm. Marisol did the same. The thud of the belt-fed guns eclipsed all other noise for a minute, and then I heard a familiar sound, the explosion of a 40mm grenade from Tina Machinegun. That would be the middle Weller sister, making her mark.

Regios lay scattered in the snow. Wren and Dutch crept into view, exchanged more fire with someone shooting at them from inside the Jimmy ten meters above them. Tethers held the airship to the ground, and a rope ladder dangled down. Either Wren or Dutch hit their target, and a body tumbled out of the airship to lie motionless in the snow.

Wren started up the rope ladder while Dutch held it. Sapropel lanterns lying in the snow lit the scene.

Something about those lanterns looked wrong to me. Set up in a perfect circle, they looked staged, since the guards wouldn’t need so much light. But why would the ARK do such a thing?

I pushed the thought aside as I opened the door of the Marilyn and slid down her ladder. In seconds, my feet were killing me with cold. Dutch grinned at me when I got close. “So, did they teach