Fires of Hell: The Alchemystic

by Maureen L. Mills

  Henry gave me a sympathetic tip of his head and thrust a cup of tea in my direction. I took it absently.

  “I have tried, Everley,” Whitcomb replied, sounding almost as frustrated as I. “But he is the captain, and he doesn’t appreciate anyone questioning his decisions.”

  “So we can do nothing to stop the madness?”

  “He will learn. Eventually.” Whitcomb thrust aside his teacup and stalked from the mess. I suppose the dual irritations of the captain ignoring his advice and my annoying presence were too much for the man.

  Sighing, I went back to work, checking the ship stem to stern to make sure we would be ready to take off whenever the summons came. With everything in readiness, I retired to my narrow bunk to snatch a few minute’s sleep.

  Mr. Jones arrived a little after 2:30 in the morning, closeting himself immediately in his cabin. We were aloft by 2:45 for the overnight flight to Marseille. The plan, according to Lieutenant Whitcomb, was to race full out for Constantinople, making as few stops along the way as possible. I hoped Henry McDonnell had stocked enough to tea to keep me going, as my three-hour nap had done little to relieve my exhaustion.

  Soon we were soaring through black skies over black fields, broken by an occasional flash of stars visible through the engine room windows. At this hour, it seemed all the world slept, except Reuben Dodd, who had the watch, Lieutenant Whitcomb at the helm, and me. Even Josiah should have retired to his cabin by now.

  I’d not sleep again, except in stolen snatches until we made Constantinople some three days hence.

  Although a chill night breeze entered through the open porthole, the thin stream of air could not compete with the engine’s furnace, which roared at full capacity, radiating excess heat into the engine room. Steam seeped from copper pipes I would have to reseal at the next extended docking. The leaks were small and expected. No pipe could hold up to the flexing of the ship’s timbers for long without cracking—not when they also had to contend with the heat and damp of the steam.

  But the combination created an atmosphere more like a tropical swamp than the French countryside. Even stripped down to my chemise and stays, sweat soon drenched me.

  Weariness fogged my vision, slowing me down as I climbed the rungs bolted to the engine’s face to check the water level in the tank. I swiped at my eyes, no doubt streaking my face with soot, leaned closer to see the gauge more clearly, and nearly lost my grip on the rungs as the tocsin began its shrill alarm.

  I slid down with my feet on either side of the ladder, not bothering with the rungs, and ran to check the control panel gauges.

  Steam pressure: good. Hot air gasbag temperature: steady and in the green. Air speed: 45 miles per hour, right on target. Barometer…

  Not good. Not good at all.

  We used the barometer to predict storms we’d have to navigate around or wait out on the ground. When the mercury level fell, bad weather was imminent. It also served as a rough guide to our altitude. The higher we were, the thinner the air. The thinner the air, the lower the barometer reading. The lower we were, the higher the reading.

  Our barometer reading was high, and rising much too rapidly for comfort.

  We were falling out of the sky, and I could see no earthly reason why.

  Chapter Ten

  The tramp of running feet sounded from on deck. “Wake the captain! We’re going down!” Reuben shouted.

  How could we be going down? All my gauges said the ship was in fine working order.

  My instruments measured the health of the engines alone. The problem must lie elsewhere in the ship. Had one of the gasbags torn? If we lost one of the aether bags, we’d be going down for certain.

  The physical and mental exhaustion brought about by long hours of tending the engines vanished as fear shot through me. I’d seen the results of airships falling from the sky before, the broken timbers and shattered bodies. I never wanted to experience the same for myself.

  The tocsin by the speaking tube sounded as I reached the door. Darting back, I snatched it up and, not waiting for whoever was on the other end to speak, I shouted, “The engine and furnace gauges read normal! I’m going up to check the gasbags!”

  Dropping the tube, I whirled to the door once more—and the smoldering scent of the fires caught my attention.

  The gauge said the gasbag temperatures were on target, but the fires burnt far too low to maintain those temperatures. My gauge had broken, and I had not noticed.

  My fault. If the ship crashed, it was my fault.

  The thought, although correct, wasn’t helpful. I swung open the furnace grating one-handed, snatching up the shovel with the other. Digging deep into the coal box, I threw pelleted coal onto the flagging flames.

  “Burn, damn you!” I bit out, and tossed on another scoop of fuel.

  The flames leaped onto the new fuel source like a tiger onto a deer, roaring just as loudly.

  I slammed the grate shut and spun open the valves sending heated air to the gasbag. The temperature gauge remained motionless.

  How could that be? It had worked fine at my pre-flight check in London yesterday. I gave it a good whack with my fist, which left me with a sore hand but otherwise accomplished nothing.

  The shouts from on deck didn’t lessen. I spun to the barometer.

  The mercury level in the tube had slowed, but not stopped. We were still falling out of the sky, simply at a slightly less murderous rate.

  Snatching up the pouch containing patching supplies and hooking it to my belt, I slammed out of the engine room, shoving past Tibbett on his way to fetch me. He was pale and trembling as the blanc mange that Henry McDonnell tried to feed us on Sundays.

  “Fill the hopper!” I shouted to him as I rushed out onto the deck.

  I skidded to a stop, assessing the situation. Reuben raced by, helping Henry toss bags of supplies overboard, their faces taut and pale in the lamplight. “Mr. Jones” leaned over the railing trying to judge our rate of descent—a nearly impossible task in the moonless night.

  Josiah stood at the bottom of the stairs to the bridge, his shirt hastily donned and half-fastened. “Toss all non-essential gear, starting with the galley stores!” he shouted as Reuben threw a bag of coal pellets overboard. He spotted me and I could have felt his scowl scorch through iron cladding from one hundred feet away. “Report!” he snapped.

  “The temperature gauge is not responding. The furnace is hot and the valves are open, but we’re still losing altitude. My guess is one of the gasbags has torn, along with the broken gauge.”

  “Then see to it, Everley.” He bit off the order and returned to deciding what gear could be jettisoned.

  I stared up at the gasbags in the inadequate lantern light. I’d have to come up with a better light source one of these days, perhaps one involving parabolic mirrors. If we survived this night.

  Did the central gasbag look a little too limp?

  I grabbed the lantern from Tibbett who staggered past rubbing his arm from where I’d crashed into him. I hooked it to my waistcoat and started up the rudimentary rungs attached to the hot air bag’s superstructure.

  The lanterns, both at my hip and on the deck, swung crazily, and my head spun from the late hour and the hard labor. The world swayed back and forth, whether from the ship wallowing downward or from dizziness, I didn’t know. My hands tightened spasmodically on the rungs so I had to make a conscious effort to release each one to climb higher.

  I’d started up the nearest leg of the superstructure to the engine room door, without thinking. But it made sense. I’d installed the temperature sensor in this part of the bag. If something had happened to break the instrument, the same incident might have injured the bag.

  Reaching the bottom of the bag, I hooked my arm around the uprights and held up the lantern.

  The bottom of the bag shone pale in the lamplight, wavering in the wind, but intact. The brass linkage that led from the temperature sensor inside the bag to the gauge in the engine room see
med to be leaning too far to one side. Had it come loose from the instrument? I couldn’t tell until I climbed inside the bag itself, a complicated process while we were in flight. But the temperature sensor couldn’t be the only thing wrong with the Mercury. Even at full lift, we were still going down.

  I continued upward, squirming between silk and superstructure, scanning the bag as I went. Twenty feet above deck—nothing. Forty feet. Still nothing.

  The top curve of the bag came into view before I saw anything amiss. There, at the point where the contours of the bag fell away from the superstructure, almost beyond human reach, a gaping slit appeared in the silk of the bag, its edges oddly wet and sticky-looking in the lantern’s glow.

  “I found it!” I shouted. “Captain Rollins! I found the hole!”

  His voice floated up from below, out of sight behind the bulk of the bag. “Good work, Everley. Can you fix it?” he said, sounding as calm as could be expected under the circumstances. More so, really, and his steadiness calmed me. Panic I hadn’t acknowledged eased. My breath came slower and the insane swinging of the world damped out.

  I eyed the length of the cut, and its position, calculating how far out I’d have to lean to get a grip on the edges. “Aye, Captain, I think so.” A length of heavy silk thread to sew the edges together, reinforced with a couple of wire staples; a layer of glue over it all to seal it; and a patch to stabilize the area…

  It would hold for a few hours, anyway. Long enough to make the airfield in Marseille, where more permanent repairs could be made.

  My belt held safety clips for when I had to work above the deck or over the side on the engines or screws. I let the lantern dangle at my side and clamped a safety clip onto the one of the ropes caging the bag. If I slipped, I’d still fall a few feet, but I’d not slam into the deck or, worse, go overboard.

  Threading my legs securely through the rungs, I leaned out, trying to reach the far edge of the hole. My fingers reached three-quarters of the way along the two-foot gash.

  A difficult task to fix.

  Straightening, I removed a sturdy, curved needle and length of silk twine from the repair pouch at my waist. I threaded the needle—a tricky proposition in the near utter darkness, with the wind whipping the thread back and forth, lashing me in the face. The ship lurched to the side, and my legs tightened around the narrow pair of rungs. Exhaustion fogged my eyesight.

  I got the thread through the eye of the needle at last, although it took longer than I liked. I had slowed our descent by building up the fires in the furnace as high as possible and opening the valves as far as they would go, but we were still falling fast enough to cause, if not our deaths, at least some injuries among the crew, and inevitable damage to the ship.

  And the fires would not burn unattended indefinitely. I had to be quick.

  Leaning out once more, I began to stitch the hole closed.

  I made good progress for the first foot, and I began to think this wouldn’t be so difficult after all. I leaned out farther for the next stitch, putting a part of my weight on the taut skin of the bag for support.

  The far end of the cut began to split from the increased stress, jagging upward at an angle to the original gash.

  I froze, and the rip stopped.

  I’d have to find some way to stabilize the other end of the tear, or the whole bag would burst open, leaving us to drop like a wounded bird.

  Using the muscles of my back and legs in order to minimize the strain on the silk, I sat back up onto the rungs. The bag’s superstructure continued above me for another few feet, ending in a wooden loop circling the top of the bag. If I could hook a line around the top hoop, I could use it to support the whole weight of my body, allowing me to stretch out over the bag, giving me maximum reach.

  “Line!” I shouted, hands scrambling over my various pouches and pockets, searching for the line I knew I didn’t have. “Someone send up a line!”

  “On its way!” Josiah shouted back.

  I didn’t dare take the time to look down. I could not afford to rattle my nerves any more than they already were. “Captain! What’s the mercury?”

  He understood my cryptic question immediately. “Altitude two hundred feet, descent slowed, but still too fast!”

  He sounded clearer. Perhaps he’d climbed to the poop deck to try to see the damage.

  “Have Tibbett cut the engines!” I shouted down to him. “Divert all heat to the gas bag!” At the very least, cutting the engines would help prevent our being dragged along the ground when we hit. I hoped Tibbett remembered which valves to close and which to open. He’d seen me working them often enough when he brought me tea from the galley. I should have thought to cut the engines earlier, but the captain usually gave those sorts of orders.

  To be fair, I hadn’t stuck around in the engine room long enough to have received such orders even if they’d been given.

  “Already done!” Josiah shouted back.

  And we were still descending? No time to wait for the line. I whipped off my coat and tied one sleeve to the superstructure above my head. Making a hole in the other sleeve—above the natural reinforcement of the cuff—with the utility knife from my tool pouch, I unhooked my safety clip from the rope I’d had it on and refastened it through the hole in my sleeve. Bracing my feet against the rungs, I straightened my body until I hung horizontally over the bag, trusting all my weight to the coat’s weave.

  The fabric creaked, but it held.

  Muttering thanks under my breath for good English wool, I took up the needle and thread, fastened off the end of the tear I’d been working on previously, and started over on the far, unstable end of the tear.

  I heard Josiah’s sharp exclamation directly below me. “Everley! What are you doing?” A brief pause, and then I heard, more hesitantly, “Everley?”

  “Damnation and blast!” I snapped, not taking my gaze from my work. “What are you doing up here? You have no business putting yourself in danger doing tasks your crew should do. The Mercury will be gaining altitude soon, and you need to tell Tibbett when to close the heat valves. The temperature gauge is no good.”

  “I brought the line,” he said. “Come back to the ladder and I’ll tie you on more securely.”

  “No need, Captain.” I set the last couple of stitches and fastened off the thread. “I’ll be done in a couple of minutes, no more. Now, get back down to the deck!”

  He said nothing, but I felt the vibrations under my feet as he climbed higher. I heard him move, a slide of fabric against fabric, and a grunt of effort.

  A large hand locked onto the back waist of my trousers. “I’ve got you,” Josiah said.

  “Have you clipped your safety line onto something?” I replied, tersely. “These rungs are meant to hold one person, preferably a smallish one.” What was the man thinking? Everything on board an airship was made with weight restrictions in mind, including the light slats of the service ladders.

  “Just hurry, Everley!”

  I slid the needle back into its case, pulled out a coil of thin wire and a pair of clippers, and snipped several lengths of wire, forming them into staples to reinforce the rough seam.

  “Nearly done,” I panted. My back muscles were beginning to tremble from the strain of holding up my upper body. I slapped in the staples and reached down to my pouch one more time for glue.

  I opened the pot and smeared on the mixture with my hands since I had no time to search my pockets for a brush. The glue would seal the edges, making the seam more airtight. I would have to patch it with silk later. The hole was too big for the length tucked in the bottom of my kit.

  About the edges of the split silk, I felt a certain stickiness of a different texture and consistency than the glue. I brought my hand to my nose and sniffed.

  Underneath the odor of the rubber and horse-hoof sealant, I smelled turpentine or pitch. Perhaps a mixture of both.

  Not what I’d expect to find anywhere on a hot air bag, as it was too likely to fail und
er high temperatures.

  The muscles in my back twitched and shook, warning me that they were on the verge of collapse, which would send me face-first into my slap-dash repair, perhaps ripping it back open. I patted on what patching fabric I had, covering as much of the stitching as I could. “Done! I’m coming in.”

  Bending my legs, I swung back toward the service ladder. Even that small motion made my back sob with relief. I reached behind me for the rungs, and Josiah grabbed my shoulder, hauling me upright, still with my back to the ladder.

  Not a stable position.

  I felt my feet slip, and only the heels of my boots catching on the edge of the rung kept me from dangling in the air by the coat sleeve still hooked to my belt.

  That, and the strong arm curled around my middle.

  I wriggled my arms free and got a good grip on the rung at my shoulders, turning one foot at a time until I faced Josiah, my feet resting one rung above his to equalize our heights.

  His sharp grey eyes narrowed, studying me like I was some scientific experiment gone unexpectedly wrong. He took in the locks of my auburn hair that had come loose from its plaits and pins and now blew across my face. His gaze moved down to my arms, bare but for the tiny, sheer sleeves of my camisole; down to the shadowy curves of my bosom over the top of the low-cut corset exposed by my unbuttoned waistcoat. I shivered, and only partly from the cold night air.

  I assume his gaze would have traced over my hips and legs and on to my feet, but the closeness of our bodies blocked his view.

  Well, so much for trying to keep my gender a secret.

  Chapter Eleven

  “What are you about, Captain?” I said, immediately going on the offensive. “You are putting both our lives in danger by adding your weight to a ladder designed to hold but one person.”

  “Chief Engineer Everley,” he began, and the icy anger in his voice chilled me more than the frigid night air. “Or should I say, Miss Everley?”