by Gareth Ward
The Swordfish hovered over the wildflower meadow, the curved array of propellers on the engine pods spinning, halting and reversing as she manoeuvred. An aeronaut stepped onto the catwalk surrounding the envelope. Over her shoulder she hefted a weapon that made the rotary blunderbuss look like a peashooter. She chained herself to the safety rail, flipped up the weapon’s sights and directed it downwards.
“Stand well clear, everyone. They’re using landing harpoons,” shouted Hawk.
The aeronaut took aim then jolted backwards, disappearing in a cloud of steam that exploded from the weapon’s barrel. A barbed bolt trailing a thin steel hawser shot from the billowing cloud and thudded into the meadow. Overhead, further explosions sent more harpoons slamming into the grass, the impact trembling the soles of Sin’s boots.
“Landing crews, to your positions,” shouted Hawk.
Sin rushed to a harpoon that jutted from the grass twenty yards starboard of the airship. With the girth of a small fence post and extending three feet above the ground, the litanium rod was far bigger than it had seemed when fired from the air. Sin grabbed one of the handles protruding from the rod and put his weight on it. Lottie, Stanley and Mercy, the other members of his landing team, did the same. Their task was to keep the harpoon embedded in the earth while hawser-reelers in the depths of the airship wound in the cable.
A steamwhistle sounded, then the hawser pulled taut and the harpoon shuddered. Foot by foot the airship descended, the steel wire groaning almost musically. Sin tried not to think about the strain on the hawser, or about the story that Shady Brianna, who’d been the Fixer’s eyes and ears at the railyard, had once recounted. She’d described in graphic detail the mutilation of a rail worker sliced in two when a cable towing a freight locomotive had snapped.
A gust of wind buffeted the airship. The cable sang, and the harpoon lifted an inch, the metal barbs grating in the rocky soil.
“We’re losing her, Staff,” shouted Sin.
Across the meadow, the port harpoon wrenched free, scattering candidates. It whipped through the air, taking with it one stubborn candidate who refused to let go. Sin’s stomach lurched; Zonda swung wildly at the cable’s end. The squall rocked the balloon, making the cable dance erratically. One moment Zonda was some twenty feet in the air, the next she was dangerously close to being dashed into the ground.
“We got this,” said Stanley to Sin. “Go get her, brother.”
Sin sprinted across the grass. “Who’s your nominated carrier?” he yelled at the dazed candidates.
Trixie pushed herself to her feet. “Jasper,” she said and pointed. Sin rolled his eyes. It had to be him, didn’t it? Well Zonda would just have to hate him some more. He bent over Jasper, who kneeled on all fours, winded, and unclipped a coil of safety rope from his belt.
“Behind you!” cried Trixie.
Sin turned. The harpoon hurtled towards him with Zonda clinging on for dear life, her expression a combination of fear and determination.
Hurling himself at the harpoon, Sin grabbed a handle. His fingers locked around the metal and his feet lifted from the grass. The wind snatched at Sin’s flight suit, trying to dislodge him. He clipped the safety rope onto one of the harpoon’s handles and tossed the free coils towards the candidates on the ground.
“Get ready for the jolt!” he shouted to Zonda.
Below, the candidates grabbed the dangling rope and the harpoon lurched.
“Am I forgiven?” Sin yelled above the wind.
“I’m not sure,” Zonda yelled back. “I saved you from Eldritch, so this makes us about even.”
“You didn’t actually put yourself in danger,” Sin argued. “I’m risking life and limb; that’s got to count for something.”
Hauled in by the candidates, the wild movement of the hawser lessened to a gentle sway.
“I sort of feel you might owe me some cake as well,” said Zonda.
“Owe you for what?”
“No specific reason. Just general owingness of cake. In fact, I think a nice piece of Battenberg would go a long way to securing my forgiveness.”
“Fine, I’ll get you Battenberg.”
Zonda grabbed his hand and smiled. “Wonderlicious. I do so much prefer it when we’re friends.”
The candidates gathered on the bridge of the Swordfish. To their rear menaced the bulk of Sergeant Stoneheart. Dressed in her flight suit and rigair boots, it appeared she was coming with them, as was Madame Mékanique. Giant oval windows the height of the room gave views to port and starboard, while an ironglass dome below the nose spike provided vision to the front. The brassanium ship’s wheel stood at the centre of the dome, its polished spokes gleaming in the sunlight.
“Welcome to the Swordfish,” said Captain Hawk. “Things run differently aboard ship.” She stamped her rigair boot, the metal claws clanging on the chequer-plate. “This is not the floor, it’s the deck. Those are not walls, they’re bulkheads. You do not go along a corridor to the bathroom, you go down a passageway to the heads.”
From behind the ship’s wheel Hawk lifted two whistle-sticks. They had the appearance of sheriff’s truncheons, but were cast from brassanium with a whistle at one end. “Living onboard an airship is not easy. Space is tight, and privacy is limited.”
Sin rubbed his arm. The flight suit concealed the puncture marks from his injections. However, unlike the palace, where he had his own room, on the airship he would be sharing with Stanley. Injecting himself in secret was going to be tricky.
“Tempers will inevitably fray,” continued Hawk, “so I am appointing two bosuns who will be in charge of discipline.” Her gaze ran over the candidates. “COG Beuford, front and centre.”
Beuford stepped forwards and stamped to attention. “Staff.”
“Onboard the airship I am not Staff, I am Captain.”
“Yes, Captain,” corrected Beuford, stamping his feet again for good measure.
Hawk handed him a whistle-stick and returned her gaze to the remaining candidates.
It didn’t surprise Sin that Beuford had been selected. Big and imposing, with a confident swagger, he had the required presence to ensure discipline. He was also fair. Not once had Sin seen him abuse his size.
“COG Von Darque, front and centre,” said Hawk.
A wave of groans erupted from the East Wingers.
Velvet stepped leisurely forwards and took her place next to Beuford. “Captain,” she said, with an air of conceit.
Hawk passed her the whistle-stick and then addressed the candidates. “You will obey all lawful orders given by the bosuns. Disobeying them is as good as disobeying me, and that’s mutiny.”
Velvet glanced at Sin and a smirk curled her lips. Unlike Beuford, she delighted in abusing her power. Sin had no doubt she would.
SCREECH!
Velvet’s whistle-stick blasted next to Sin’s head, making his ears ring. “Jump to it, COG Sin, that coal isn’t going to shift itself.”
Sin rubbed the back of his hand across his forehead, making a smudge in the black coal dust clinging to his skin. He’d spent the morning shovelling coal into barrows, which Zonda and Jasper wheeled to the boilers. It was hard, back-breaking work, but he refused to show any weakness. Besides, Velvet was strictly an amateur compared to the nuns at the Sacred Science Orphanage, where he’d been tormented for the first ten years of his life. On the airship, there were no sermons on how sloth was one of the seven deadly sins, no vitriolic prayers about pathetic weaklings and no beatings with canes.
Thanks to its proximity to the boiler room, the air in the coal bunker possessed an oppressively dry heat. Jasper had stripped to the waist in an attempt to remain cool. Fearful that his needle marks might be discovered, Sin had declined to remove his shirt, and as the morning had progressed, he found that the increased temperature simply didn’t affect him.
Sin heaved a shovel of coke into Jasper’s waiting barrow. Much as Sin disliked the coward, Jasper was working like a machine, taking two barrows for
every one of Zonda’s.
“You don’t appear to have broken a sweat,” said Jasper, mopping his brow with a neckerchief tied to his wrist. “That blue blood must be really working out for you.”
Emptying another shovel load into the barrow, Sin said, “I don’t have blue blood. Nimrod cured me.”
“That’s not what I heard.” Jasper raised his sweat-soaked eyebrows.
With excessive violence, Sin smashed the shovel into the coal pile close by Jasper’s feet. “Then you heard wrong.”
Zonda dropped her barrow next to Jasper, killing the conversation. She, too, didn’t have the luxury of stripping down, and her coal-stained blouse clung to her. “Splendiferous news. Sergeant Stoneheart says the boiler room only needs one more barrow each.”
Velvet prodded Sin with her whistle-stick. “Make sure it’s a full one this time. None of these half measures you’ve been letting COG Chubb get away with.”
“Bosun?” said Sin, keeping all emotion from his voice.
“Yes, COG Sin?”
“I’m not allowed to insult you, am I?”
Velvet struck the whistle-stick against the palm of her hand. “No, that would be against Captain’s orders.”
“But I can think it, right?”
Velvet’s forehead crinkled into a frown. “I suppose you can think what you want.”
Sin dumped a shovel of coal into the barrow. “In that case, I think you’re a stuck-up, vindictive witch.”
The Captain’s cabin was five times the size of the crew quarters and the bulkheads were decorated with splendid wood panelling. Light streamed through a curved brassanium and ironglass bay window, besides which hung plush silk curtains. Framed maps and photographs adorned the bulkheads, and a well-stocked drinks cabinet nestled in one corner.
Sin stood to attention before the Captain’s desk, on which rested a grandly decorated antique globe. Hawk sat in a padded leather chair, poring over a journal. Ignoring him, she turned a page. Sin knew it was part of the punishment, making him wait, reinforcing how unimportant he was. The Fixer had often done the same to rival gang leaders. He’d never bothered using the ruse with Sin or the other urchins, it would have been a waste of effort; they already knew how insignificant they were.
“Day Two and already on Bosun’s Report,” said Hawk, still not looking up from the journal.
“Yes, Captain.”
“The other Staff seem to think you’re special. Do you think you’re special, COG Sin?”
“No, Captain.”
Hawk finally looked up and fixed him with a hard stare. “So, what gives you the right to insult my bosun?”
Sin held Hawk’s gaze. “What gives her the right to order me about?”
Snapping the journal closed, Hawk rose to her feet and strode up to Sin. “I gave her that right. COG Von Darque was not chosen idly, but after great thought. Do you have a problem with my authority?”
“No, Captain.”
“Do you have a problem with taking orders from women?”
“No, Captain.” Sin rolled his shoulders. “Just from COG Von Darque.”
“And why is that?”
Why was taking orders from Velvet so hard? Maybe it was her deliberately flaunted position of privilege, or perhaps the fact that she’d used him as bait and got him infected with the blue blood. Deep down, he suspected there was another reason.
“We’ve got history,” was all he said.
“The past is past, and can’t be changed.” A sad note tinged Hawk’s voice and her gaze flicked to a large framed photograph of an airship that sat on her desk. The SS Summersong. “You’re only ever in charge of your future. And if you want one aboard my airship, you’d better knuckle under.”
Hawk strode to a peculiar brass hemisphere mounted on top of a litanium tube in the centre of the cabin. From the smooth, polished surface protruded what appeared to be a number of telescope eyepieces.
“Look into the viewer,” ordered Hawk, tapping one of the telescopes.
Sin lowered his head to the eyepiece. A picture of the bridge came into view. Lottie stood on watch at a curved brassanium rail, scanning the sky ahead of the Swordfish.
With a mekanikal click, Hawk turned a wheel and the picture slid to a view of the boilers. Stripped to the waist, Stanley and Jimmy shovelled coal into the furnaces.
“That’s incredible. How does it work?” said Sin.
“Prisms, mirrors and ironglass tubes, apparently. Nimrod tried to explain the science, but that’s not important to me. What matters is I can see my crew, obeying orders, working like cogs in a machine. However, for the machine to operate, all the gears must do their job.”
The picture changed again to the outside of the Swordfish. In the distance, a dirty coal barge lumbered through the sky.
“Are you committed to crewing my airship, to being part of that machine, COG Sin?” There was a seriousness to Hawk’s words, as if she was asking Sin a life or death question. With the threat of war looming ever closer, perhaps she was.
Sin lifted his head from the viewer and stood to attention. “Aye-aye, Captain.”
“Good.” Hawk flipped open a dented brass pocket watch. “We’re about to mid-air refuel. You will help me supervise topside.”
“Thank you, Captain.”
Hawk snapped the watch shut. “Then, as punishment duty, you will shovel our entire coal resupply from the chute to the bunkers.”
Their boots freshly rewound, the refuelling detachment stood clamped to the ratlines criss-crossing the Swordfish’s stern. The procedure was dangerous, and an atmosphere of apprehension hung over them. From her position at the coal chute, Ada fired a brass Very pistol into the air. Burning brightly, the green magnesium flare launched by the signal gun drifted to starboard, indicating the relative wind speed.
Noting the flare’s movement, Sin adjusted the position of his semaphore flags, directing the chunky coal barge closer. His stomach churned, and a moment’s giddiness washed over him. He’d walked on the envelope several times during the voyage and was used to seeing the patchwork pastures drifting past hundreds of yards below, but the presence of the squat, dirty coal barge changed everything. It hung in the air, black smoke belching from its broad funnels, defying the laws of nature. It was a solid reference point for Sin’s eyes, behind which the clouds disconcertingly scudded by.
The Swordfish’s spiked dorsal fin had been lowered to one side, allowing the barge to manoeuvre in close. The airship drifted nearer, its shadow falling across the tailfins. Tether ropes hanging from the hawseholes below the barge’s nose slapped against the envelope. Sin crossed his flags above his head, signalling the barge to maintain position as tether teams walked jerkily towards the ropes.
“Secure them fast around the bollards,” shouted Hawk. “There’ll be hell to pay if she pulls loose and dumps coal on my airship.”
Not to mention that it could knock any of us tumbling to our deaths, thought Sin, something that appeared of far less concern to Hawk than potential damage to her precious Swordfish.
An articulated steel pipe lowered on hefty chains from a bulge in the barge’s keel and angled towards the battered brassanium coal hatch that protruded above the Swordfish’s envelope.
“In times of old, the refuelling hatches provided pirates with an easy slide to the engine rooms,” said Hawk. “Nowadays, we fit them with boarding deterrents. Or, as I like to call them, bloody great spikes. COG Irk, you do not want to fall into that hatch.”
“Aye-aye, Captain,” shouted Ada. She turned a wheel and pistons forced the hatch’s twin flaps open. Using a large hooked pole, she guided the mouth of the articulated pipe inside. The sharp clack of ratcheting gears sounded and a set of rubberised clamps secured the pipe in place. “Docked and locked,” she shouted.
Keeping the semaphore flags crossed, Sin lowered them in front of his body. The pipe shook and clanged, tons of coal rattling downwards into the Swordfish’s bunkers. Tons of coal that he was destined to move.
>
The refuelling complete, Sin made his way to the bunker. Beneath the bottom end of the delivery chute towered a mountain of black. He was supposed to have it shifted into the bunkers by morning. Even working all night, he wouldn’t get it done. Bloody Velvet. He should have kept his mouth shut, only she wound him up, punching his buttons. At least she wasn’t here lording over him as he suffered his punishment.
Footsteps clanked from the engine room’s ladder and Sin’s heart dropped. He slammed the shovel into the pile and looked down, not wanting to see the smug look on her face when she walked into the bunker.
“Oi! Oi!” shouted Stanley. “Is this where the bad boys hang out?”
Sin looked up. It wasn’t Velvet. Stanley swaggered towards him, a shovel over his shoulder. “Figured you might need a hand, brother.”
Sin heaped another spade-load into the barrow. “Thanks, Nobby. It’s gonna take all night. I can’t ask that of you.”
Stanley grinned. “You’re me brother and all, but I weren’t going to do this on me Jack Jones, was I?”
More feet clattered down the stairs and Zonda, Lottie and a host of helpers paraded into the bunker. The whole East Wing had come to muck-in, with the notable exception of Jasper.
“Don’t seem right both bosuns coming from the West Wing. I reckon us East Wingers got to stick together. You know the code: one in trouble, all in trouble, ain’t it,” said Stanley.
“Thanks,” said Sin, relieved. “I owe you.”
Zonda placed a hand on Sin’s arm. “No. We owe you. Velvet was going to grind us into the deck plates. You taking the fall has avoided that.”
Coal dust covered Sin’s arms, hiding the needle marks from his injections. Zonda’s fingers rested uncomfortably close to the scarred skin. Sin shovelled another load of coal, using it as an excuse to shrug free of her touch. “Don’t see that it’s made any difference. She’s still in charge?”
“Hawk had to punish you to show solidarity with her officers,” said Lottie. “But she accidentally left the speaking tube open when I was on watch and I overheard her giving Velvet a right dressing-down.”
