Zachariah roared out of Baldwin, the rolling pieces of his dashboard pointing him in

  the right direction. He pulled into a climb to get over the Mansions. He steered into

  the first pass the rest of the racers would be using to get through the mountain chain

  and head northeast to Lobster Castle.

  “Everything is in line,” said Bolan. “Nothing indicates stress on my board.”

  “We’re on point to hit Buckley’s Pass,” said Sola. “Are we gaining on the others?”

  “I don’t know,” said Zachariah. “We’re flying higher than most of them can go. If we

  were higher, the engine would start cutting out.”

  “We’re not exceeding the speed limit like we did earlier,” said Bolan.

  “It looks like we’re not on the path,” said Zachariah. “As long as it’s not pushing

  against us, we should be okay.”

  “Is that storm clouds?,” asked Sola. She pointed at a storm bank rolling in.

  “We have to keep flying,” said Zachariah. “This must be the lightning I was warned

  about.”

  “The animal riders are going to have problems if it catches up with them,” said Bolan.

  He turned his seat to look at the oncoming storm.

  “We will too,” said Zachariah. “Lightning will interfere with our systems if we’re

  struck.”

  “It’s moving faster than we are,” said Bolan.

  “That would indicate a high wind,” said Zachariah. “That should be trying to push us

  off course.”

  “We’re dead on for the pass,” said Sola.

  “There’s something unnatural about this,” said Zachariah. “I have a bad feeling.”

  “We need something that looks through clouds,” said Bolan.

  “I’ll add that to the modifications list,” said Zachariah.

  “There are planes coming out of that cloud, Da,” said Sola.

  Zachariah took a moment to look at the sparks erupting from the clouds. They were

  flying machines in the mode of the Kellers, or Octo. He noted weapons of some kind

  built in the noses.

  His eyes went to the black flags painted on the noses of the vehicles. He shook his

  head.

  “Pirates,” said Zachariah. “We’re about to be chased by pirates.”

  “You’re kidding,” said Bolan.

  “We’ll have to go off course to outrun them, Da,” said Sola. “The racing commission

  will want to know why.”

  “We’ll have to get away from them before we can worry about the commission,” said

  Zachariah.

  “Maybe we can lose them in the pass,” said Bolan.

  “We can try that,” said Zachariah. “I have been meaning to test how well the Rocket

  steers in a bad situation.”

  “Now is the time of the test, Da?,” asked Sola. “Seriously?”

  “Just make sure everything is strapped down,” said Zachariah. “We’re going in.”

  The kids took several rushed seconds to check on anything loose, and their daemons,

  before strapping themselves in their chairs and locking the chairs down so the wild

  maneuvering they expected to come wouldn’t throw them to the floor.

  Zachariah wondered if it would be better to charge at the pirate planes. Their weapons

  only seemed to face front. If he could get behind them, they couldn’t shoot at him. He

  already had the Rocket in a shallow dive. To get behind them now would be to fly

  upside down in a loop.

  He didn’t know if the Rocket could handle that.

  Zachariah steered into the pass. He thought he should fly up and turn into the cloud.

  He wasn’t sure the Rocket could take a thunderstorm.

  Bright pulses of light blinded him for a few seconds. He should have put in a tinted

  window. That would be something for the next design.

  “They’re shooting lightning at us,” said Bolan. “That could cause a systems crash.”

  “I’m going to hit the underjets and stall out,” said Zachariah. “Hopefully that will

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  cause the flying machines to overshoot us. We’ll be behind them, so we can chase

  them while we think of a strategy.”

  “We just have to get close enough for Hardy to fly over and back,” said Sola. “He can

  take care of those planes for us.”

  “And Knife still has the light beamer we came up with to cut with at the shop,” said

  Bolan.

  “We’ll incorporate that in the designs for the next Rocket,” said Zachariah. “Get

  ready. This could be rough.”

  Zachariah cut the thrust, and directed all the energy to the belly jets. He wished he

  had some way to see behind them. He hovered in place and hoped the other fliers

  went around the sudden obstacle in their way.

  “A bear was flying that one plane, Da,” said Sola.

  “We’ll worry about that later,” said Zachariah. “Now we’re behind them, we can use

  Hardy to knock some of them out of the air.”

  “Incoming,” said Bolan.

  Fire birds erupted from one of the enemy machines and headed for the Rocket.

  Zachariah cut the belly jets and poured power from the main jet in the stern. He

  opened the cockpit.

  “Knife,” he said. “We need a shield.”

  The mechanized spider surged forward. He climbed up to see out the cockpit. His

  back split open to extrude the shield projector he used. A ball of blue light surrounded

  the Rocket as it whipped back and forth after the sky pirates.

  The energy birds hit the shield. Knife rocked in place as he fought to keep the shield

  up. Sparks and a small bit of smoke rose from his back.

  “He can’t keep that up,” said Bolan. “We need to do something else.”

  “All right,” said Zachariah. The enemy fliers seemed to be faster than the Rocket, but

  they had less maneuverability in his opinion. He might be able to drive them into the

  walls.

  The flier with the bear at the controls whipped next to the Rocket. A red haired girl

  pushed the cover back so she could stand while the thing whipped around. She pulled

  a bow from inside the aircraft. She nocked an arrow and took aim at the open cockpit.

  Zachariah cut the throttle. He pulled the stick back so the other vehicle flew by. The

  arrow missed and struck the cliff on the other side of the Rocket. The stone carved

  itself into a semblance of a bear.

  “All right,” said Zachariah. He pushed the throttle wide open again. “That was

  interesting.”

  “What happens to us if she does that to the Rocket?,” asked Sola.

  “I have no idea,” said Zachariah. “Maybe it cuts the engine off and we fall down into

  the bottom of the pass. If that happens, we’re out of the race unless we come up with

  a solution we can use.”

  “It looks like the others are in just as much trouble as we are,” said Bolan. “Maybe

  we can pull up and climb over the mountain.”

  Zachariah had to agree with the assessment. The other racers were flying evasively

  in the pass with the pirates in hot pursuit. The Kellers had opened their jet, and the

  silent boy was playing a song on a musical instrument while eating a sandwich of nuts

  and peppers. Waves of sound rocked enemy and potential ally alike.

  Zachariah thought about his next move, wondering if he should be flying at all.

  Maybe someone else should be doing this. He firmed up his face and decided he was

  getting his kids out of danger.

  “Give me the shovel,” said Zachariah. He held out his hand for the digging tool.

  Bolan unstrapped from his seat and pulled himself to the locker next to his dashboard.

  He opened the door and pulled out the shovel. He handed it over, and then strapped

  back in.

  “Drop the shield, Knife,” said Zachariah. “It’s time we did something about this

  mess.”

  The redhead took aim at the Rocket as the bear kept them steady in their flight. One

  shot would be the end of the flier, and then she could take aim at the next pilot who

  needed to be taken down a notch.

  Zachariah urged the Rocket forward. The throttle lever stood in the full power slot as

  the aircraft tried to overtake the other vehicle. Knife fired small pulses of light at

  anything that looked dangerous to it.

  The bursts made the flier swing side to side and lose distance. The Rocket closed on

  the faster air vehicle. Zachariah stood. The red head stood too. Zachariah threw the

  shovel. The tool spun through the air. It bounced off the cockpit cover and flew off

  into the sky. The bear overcorrected and crashed into the mountain on the right side.

  “One down,” said Zachariah, sitting down in his seat. “Let’s see what else we can

  do.”

  He chased after the raiders, watching lightning being thrown after his colleagues. He

  needed to do more. Knife’s pulses did minimal damage when they hit. He needed

  something more.

  One of the raiders threw something like an apple at the Kellers’s plane. The older boy

  played a chord on his instrument. The apple exploded in a cloud of fire that caused

  the younger boy to jerk out of reach of the wave.

  The other flier stayed on him, preparing to throw another grenade at the Keller jet.

  “Shoot at her, Knife,” said Zachariah. His instinct said let the Kellers get blown out

  of the sky. Clearing them meant they could fly out of the way if they wanted.

  Keeping them in the air kept them as targets for the air pirates, which meant one less

  plane chasing his.

  The daemon fired at the flying machine in front of them. The pilot avoided the pulses

  of light, but let go of the exploding apple so that it flew behind her.

  Zachariah pushed the stick to the side, fanning the engine to tilt the Rocket in the

  desired direction. He didn’t want that thing exploding in his face.

  The resulting explosion rocked the flying machine, but he didn’t see what he could

  do about that. He righted the vehicle and charged in to help the Kellers again.

  “Power is going down,” said Bolan. “We’re going to crash.”

  “No, we’re not,” said Zachariah. “Gold Bug, I need you to patch the damage any way

  you can. It just has to hold until we get through the pass and can land somewhere.”

  The ant scurried out the opened window and made its way out of sight.

  “Knife, do you still have the ball gun set up?,” asked Zachariah. “That’s what we

  need here.”

  Knife pulled in the torch and pushed out a variant of the force field projector. Bolan

  had taught him how to catch things with it so they wouldn’t hit the ground and suffer

  breakage.

  Blue balls of light danced across the sky. That caused the flying machines on both

  sides to twist and turn as they made their way through the pass. One of the balls hit

  a goat and trapped it on its perch as the fighters flew by.

  “All right,” said Zachariah. “We’re costing them speed as they try to avoid us. If we

  get close, Hardy is going to have to ram one of the fighters.”

  “That looks dangerous, Da,” said Sola.

  Hardy buzzed as he bounced to the front of the compartment. His mandibles looked

  ready to chew through steel.

  “We have to knock some of these other flying machines out of the air,” said

  Zachariah.

  “Power is still dropping,” said Bolan. “Can Gold Bug fix this by himself?”

  “He’ll have to,” said Zachariah.