Free Dreadnought by Cherie Priest

naps.
    Between dozing and the inevitable tedium, Mercy was uncertain how much time had passed when she heard the poppingnoise again—the one that, she’d been assured, was only the result of a pneumatic hammer. But this time, when she looked out over the now-black mountains and valleys below, she knew she was well above any hammers or other tools. And down there, in broken lines and in sparkling flashes, she could see more fires in the distance.
    All the other passengers were awake already and watching in utter silence, except for the elderly man, who still rested his head upon his wife. But even she strained to see over his head and out the window, wondering, like the rest of them, how close they were to the fighting.
    The captain, ordinarily ebullient and talkative, was quiet. Mercy could see him through the gap in the curtain that separated the cockpit from the passenger cabin; in the glow of the low-lit cockpit lamps, she could tell that his knuckles were white on the steering column. He shot a nervous look at the first mate, but the other man’s attention was occupied by something down below, and then with something in the passenger cabin. He hissed back at the crew members in the rear. “All the lights. Every last one of them, off—now!”
    The sound of unbuckling was loud in the otherwise empty space, and the two men in the back went from corner to corner, unplugging the strings that gave a dim electric glow to the
Zephyr
’s interior.
    Gordon Rand asked, in his quietest and calmest voice, “Surely they can’t see us, all the way up here?”
    “They can see us,” the captain replied, equally quiet but only half as calm. “All they have to do is look up. Problem is, they won’t see our civilian paint job. We thought we were far enough from the fighting that we could leave the heavy exterior lights back at the station.”
    “Are they likely to notice us?” Against all logic, but keeping with the mood, Larsen was whispering.
    “Hopefully not,” the captain was quick to say. “I’m going to take us higher, so they won’t hear us if we run the engines. We need to get out of their immediate airspace.”
    “What are we doing
in
their immediate airspace?” Mr. Rand demanded.
    The first mate replied, “We aren’t there on
purpose,
you limey bastard. The Yanks must’ve made a
serious
push between this morning and this evening. Carter said there’s no way they’d swing this far, unless we’ve gone off course—”
    “I know what Carter said,” the captain growled. “And we haven’t gone off course. We’re brushing the south end of the Smokies, for God’s sake. If there’s fighting, it must’ve gotten here faster than the telegraph got to Richmond.”
    The students were pressed with their noses against the glass like little boys examining a store display at Christmas. They were actually smiling, as excited as Mercy was nauseated. She’d never been to a front—the CSA’s, or anybody else’s—and knowing one was immediately below made the sides of her head hurt.
    In front of her, the old man awakened and asked loudly, “What’s going on?”
    Mercy resisted the urge to shush him, but Gordon Rand was nervous enough to wave his hand and say, “Sir,
please
.”
    One of the crew members said, “They can’t hear us all the way up here.”
    Everyone knew it was true, but no one wanted to push any of the luck that held them aloft.
    It was nearly as black as the inside of a cave, there inside the
Zephyr
. Only the peeping glow of moonlight bouncing off the clouds lit the scene. The passengers could hardly see one another, though they traded nervous stares, looking from face to face for signs of comfort or confidence and finding nothing but the weak, pale frowns of ghosts.
    Down on the ground, the world was bumpy and black, exceptwhere artillery flared, fired, and coughed thick plumes of smoke that looked white against the stark pitch of the night around the lines.
    If Mercy looked long enough, she