Free Her Majesty's Western Service by Leo Champion

large, thin section of gondola-plate. The air was full of debris, especially the hydrogen sacs. Almost all civilian dirigibles had crude fire-detachment systems; if a sac caught on fire, it could be released – with part of the nets or plating – before the fire could spread. You lost that sac, but you saved the ship.
    Of course, you then had to re-inflate a new sac, an d you often had to ditch cargo to make up the weight in the meantime. The usual pirate tactic was to force a cargo ship down, land themselves, get the crew off at gunpoint – an unwritten understanding was that the downed crew wouldn't resist, and the pirates in turn wouldn't use any more force than they had to – then re-inflate the dirigible with their own compressed-hydrogen cylinders and fly it off.
    That was what most of these trash were attempting to do. Barely-airworthy ships, makeshift contraptions with just enough hydrogen - or, in a couple of cases that Perry had seen, simple hot air - to get alof t and take a stab at something with missiles or crude cannon. This was just a matter of killing them before they could; the pirate ships were easy targets, except that there were so damned many of them, and all mixed amidst the bolting, un-coordinated ships of the convoy.
    Loose fire – and it was all too easy to hit something you didn't want to, from a swaying airship in an irregular wind – was a bad risk. Airships had a lot of hit points, but nine-inch missiles were designed to inflict real damage. Stray shots into civilian freighters would be doing the pirates’ own work for them.
    4-106 sped up. The fore guns chuddered, blazing shot and tracers into a larger pirate dirigible, something actually airworthy. The pirate tried to evade, and Perry saw a pair of riggers on the tail, physically forcing it. Another rigger worked with a wrench on a stuck panel, which as Perry watched was released, a burning-from-tracers hydrogen sac lifting out. Two more had caught while that panel was stuck, and those two sacs released a moment later, navigational hazards for the next few minutes.
    Martindale turned slightly, so that the starboard missileers and the aft guns could have a chance at that dirigible. Two missiles fired, one of them missing but the second, a high explosive round, blasting the rudder – and the two men working it, unless they'd jumped clear at the last moment – into fragments, along with the aft fifth of the ship. Both of 4-106's batteries opened up on the burning wreckage, pounding three-inch rounds along the length of the gondola, down into the cabin. Men jumped, parachutes opening behind them as they fell.
    “ Good kill. Excellent job, Swarovski.”
    “ If we only had more men , sir.”
    “ Ifs and buts, Weapons. We're doing entirely adequately for what we do have. How about that hot-air job over–”
    The aft battery opened up at the hot-air balloon Perry was pointing at, shredding its loose air sac in seconds. Three men jumped from the basket as the thing began to fall from the sky.
    “ Ensign Hastings is doing quite well, don't you think?” Perry asked. “Pass that on to him, please.”
    “Will do, sir.”
    “And Helm, keep going in. Weapons, put one missileer back to a port battery, if you will.”
    “Sir.”
     
     
    Four of the Imperial line-class ship’s riggers were on the outside, maintaining the steering vanes and keeping them clear of debris. One of them was spraying foam onto a place near the nose where a burning sac had been blown into the gondola.
    Ahle steered her paraglider onto that man – no, a woman, her hair in a tight bun. She looked up in shock and found herself facing a long pistol.
    “ Detach and depart. If you'd be so kind.”
    “What – who are you?”
    “ Captain Karen Ahle, at your service. Now, if you'd please detach and depart? Your crew will be following you shortly, Senior Airshipwoman.”
    A quick glance back showed that Ronalds, Herrick and the others were kicking off the other riggers the