Read Online Liberty (Flash Gold, #5) by Lindsay Buroker - Free Book Online

somewhere behind those trees. Were
the authorities circling the area? It seemed strange that she
wouldn’t have seen the ship fly over the ridge at some point.
    Kali leaped over a log,
almost falling when a branch nub snagged her boot. She fumbled and
caught her balance, then tried to run faster to make up for the
lost seconds.
    “Almost there,” Cedar
said, slowing down when he saw that she was falling behind.
    She waved for him to
hurry, not to wait for her. As tall as he was, he would stick out
more to someone looking in this direction.
    Instead, he crouched down
behind a blackened stump. They were still at least a hundred meters
from the unburned forest with its protective camouflage of trees
and leaves.
    The bow of an airship
sailed into view above that forest. Kali dove to the ground beside
Cedar. The stump provided poor cover, but their path would have
taken them right toward that airship. She scooted close to him,
trying to keep the stump between her body and the ship, but it
seemed pointless. If it followed on its present course, it would
fly directly over them.
    “How’d they get over
there?” Kali asked, panting between words.
    “That’s not them,” Cedar
said.
    “What?”
    “It’s a different ship.”
He pulled out his six-shooter and frowned at it, probably wishing
he had his Winchester.
    That made two of them.
Kali’s rifle was buried along with everything else.
    “Do you think it’s
backup, sent to help the Americans with their search?” Kali asked.
“Or is it pirates or something completely unrelated?”
    That would be nice, but
she didn’t know if she dared wish for that. It was always possible
some wealthy would-be prospectors had hired an airship to bring
them in to the Yukon while bypassing the slog through the pass, but
she hadn’t seen that happen yet. As far as she’d heard, most of the
legal airships in the world belonged to militaries, since they were
so expensive to build and required mechanics specializing in them
to keep them flying. Pirates and gangsters had some they had
acquired illegally, but she had yet to see a legally owned civilian
one. Still, they must exist in the world, and Dawson had become a
much more interesting place to visit in the last year.
    “Don’t know,” Cedar said
after a long peek around the stump. “There’s not a banner flying
that announces their origin or intentions.”
    “Inconsiderate.” Kali
started to lean around the stump for a peek of her own, but Cedar
put his back to the charred wood and pulled her close.
    A shadow fell across the
dead forest, an oblong shadow that preceded the airship. A moment
later, the bow drifted over their heads, about fifty feet above
them. The black paint of the hull made Kali think of pirates, and
the cannons visible thrusting from gun ports along the sides
suggested that they were well armed. If it
was
a pirate
ship, it was brazen of them to fly straight toward the city. They
must not know that a military vessel waited right over the ridge.
Maybe the two ships would end up in a battle, and the soldiers
would forget all about Cedar and Kali.
    From their position, Kali
couldn’t see if anyone stood at the railing with a spyglass, but
the ship did not slow down as it sailed over them. It drifted past,
its fans whirring and pushing it toward the ridge.
    “Looks like they didn’t
see us,” Kali whispered.
    “Or they didn’t care
about us,” Cedar said.
    “I’m fine with either
scenario.”
    “As am I.” He waited for
the black-hulled craft to disappear over the ridge, then stood up.
“Back to tracking?”
    “Yes, please.”
    Once they entered the
unburned section of the forest, it didn’t take long to reach the
spot where Cedar had found the skid marks, parallel, ski-like
tracks that had been left in the moss and dirt. They were
exactly
like the tracks Amelia’s one-person flying craft
had left.
    Nerves tangled in Kali’s
belly like snakes in one of Cudgel’s pits. She wanted to confront
the woman,