By Fire Above_A Signal Airship Novel

by Robyn Bennis

  “We’ll try something despite the stupidity, you mean?”

  Kember only cleared her throat and looked forward.

  Certainly, Josette wanted to try something, but what? Apart from Mistral’s bum steamjack and inclination to explode at the merest spark, the two ships were evenly matched in almost every way. From her current unenviable position, how could Mistral sink a ship with all the same strengths and weaknesses?

  A grin rose slowly on Josette’s lips. All the same strengths and weaknesses.

  “Ensign,” Josette said, “what do you suppose was the greatest flaw in this ship’s original design?”

  Kember spoke without hesitation. “The goddamn tail nearly came off in a turn.” She became excited for a moment, but it shifted to anxiety just as quickly. “Oh, but sir! The Ayezderhau hasn’t got the yard design. That had six airscrews and she has four, like we do now. So we don’t know which set of plans she’s built from.”

  Josette snorted and took a calming breath. “I do.”

  Kember just stared at her, confused beyond the capacity for speech.

  “I ran into the bitch who stole our plans while I was in Durum. Ayezderhau is built according to our first redesign, and we’ve improved the tail since then, haven’t we?”

  Kember looked no less confused, and rather more alarmed. “But sir! We never tested it!”

  “Ensign?” Josette asked.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “I’ll have less pessimism on the hurricane deck, please.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Josette turned to Luc Lupien, on the rudder. “You understand what we’re doing?”

  He answered her with a nod and a sly grin.

  “A little more right rudder, then, easy at first. But we’ll maintain this inferior altitude. We make a more tempting target, all the way down here.”

  She went to the rail to watch the other chasseur, but couldn’t see it around Mistral’s own expansive superstructure. She had to climb onto the port rail, planting her feet on it and leaning out at a forty-five-degree angle, with a thousand feet of empty air below her, before she could see the enemy ship. She hung with one hand gripping a diagonal martingale line, the wind in her face. The chill blast hurt her wound at first, but the pain was soon numbed by the cold.

  Mistral turned inward, cutting across the wide circle she’d been steering. “Come on, now,” Josette said, whispering to the enemy captain across half a mile of sky. “If you can out-turn us, you get a free shot. If you can’t, we’re too far below you to shoot back. So what’s the risk?”

  But the Vin captain didn’t seem to hear, or at least smelled something fishy in her invitation to battle. He maintained his slow, easy turn around the city. Kember must have read it in Josette’s face, for the girl leaned over the rail and called, “Perhaps if we threaten the garrison, he’ll have no choice.”

  Josette grinned. “Lupien, bring us right in line with the breach and then hold steady on that course.” That would allow the Vin a nice, clean shot at Mistral, if he turned just a little.

  And he did, cutting a straight line across the edge of his orbit. High above, he was lining up his shot, and Mistral was steaming right into the line of his guns.

  Josette watched for the moment they would fire, eyes not on their guns but on the motion of their tailfins. “Left rudder!” Josette called, and a second later the Vin chasseur fired her first gun.

  Her eyes widened. As the second gun fired, she watched the first shell descend through the sky, trailing wispy smoke that glowed orange in the light of the morning sun. It exploded above them at the perfect altitude to set Mistral’s envelope aflame, but fifty yards to starboard—the exact distance Mistral had shifted by virtue of her last-second maneuver. Smoking fragments of shell casing tumbled into the streets below.

  The second was lined up right along Mistral’s line of flight, and so near that Josette ducked her head at the sight of it. It burst above her, sending red-hot debris into the forward frames.

  “Fire in the nose!” she called. “Get to it quick, please, ’cause we’re not slowing down! Steamjack ahead, emergency power! Rudderman, resume our turn!”

  And as Mistral entered a tighter orbit of the town, turning to keep out of the arc of Ayezderhau’s guns, the Vin captain turned to follow. And why not? He had the height of them, and in the ever-tightening, converging circles of a turn-fight, he could keep her away from the Vin infantry on the city wall.

  She looked to Mistral’s nosecone. The fire up there was still small, but it wouldn’t take much. The number nine gas bag was less than a yard behind the flames. Worse yet, the fire stoked in the wind, growing larger in proportion to their increased speed. A flame-ringed hole opened in the envelope, and if a single ember went through it …

  The fire hissed and steam swept aft along the outside of the envelope. An extra bucketful of water—two, actually, and now three—poured from the hole in the nose, as the riggers wisely squandered ballast to make damn sure the fire was out.

  Above, the Ayezderhau’s orbit was a quarter turn behind Mistral’s, her orbit tightening, so that just a few circles would bring them far enough into Mistral’s turn to take another shot.

  Which meant Josette had succeeded in convincing the Vin captain to kill her, as she hoped she would. No matter what else happened, no matter her shortcomings, she could take pride in knowing this was one thing she was good at. “Another turn on the wheel, Luc!” she called to Corporal Lupien. Mistral eased in, her circle matching Ayezderhau’s, but the Vin ship turned tighter still.

  “Half a turn more,” she called, not quite so loud this time, as if reducing the volume of the order might create a compromise with its effect on the airframe. She could feel the stress on the superstructure already, as little pops and sprangs traveled down the keel and out through the longitudinal girders, and from there along the martingale in her hand.

  The Ayezderhau turned tighter still, so tight that another circle would bring her guns to bear.

  “Give the wheel another half turn!”

  That was too much damn strain on Mistral’s superstructure, but she had little choice if she didn’t want to spend the next few minutes on fire. Corporal Lupien had to put his weight onto the wheel to hold it there. At the tail, the rudder shivered against the rush of wind over its surface, doing all it could to resist the turn, as if it knew what a terrible idea this was.

  And above, the Ayezderhau matched Mistral’s turn with only the slightest effort. It seemed the Vin captain was even cleverer than she’d thought, for he’d made his own modifications to his ship’s tailcone.

  “As hard as she’ll go, Luc!” There was no going back now, so why the hell not?

  Lupien hesitated for a moment, until she shot him a look that made him think better. He put both hands on the wheel and pulled so hard his feet lifted off the deck. Kember ran over and pushed upward from the other side, to help him.

  Mistral’s tail strained against the turn, the wind so hard on it that ripples ran across its fabric, pressing in and outlining the girders beneath. The entire airframe bent like a macaroni noodle. Mistral made her pain known, crying out all along her length with a sound like the crackle of musketry, as slivers of wood flew loose from overstrained box girders. In frame two, a bracing cable parted with such force that its end whipped back and cut through the envelope. Keel girders groaned, on the edge of snapping. A few more moments in this turn, and Mistral would break her own spine.

  And then, standing out even amid that cacophony, there came the piercing, cracking sound of a keel girder snapping in half. Josette swept her eyes along her ship, looking to see which frame had failed, which girder had given way.

  She couldn’t find it.

  Daring to hope, she looked up at the other ship and saw its tail kinked, its keel askew. It was the Vins who’d lost a girder. And yet the Vin chasseur still turned with Mistral, and came far enough over to line up the perfect shot. If Ayezderhau shot now, both ships would die together, Mistr
al by fire and Ayezderhau by the fury of her own guns—her damaged keel torn apart by their recoil.

  Josette watched without blinking, her eyes watering from the blast of wind against them.

  And Ayezderhau fell off from her turn, and came out of it without firing a shot.

  “Rudder amidships!” Josette called. Corporal Lupien only had to let go of his wheel, and it spun back through two turns by itself. The strain came off Mistral’s frame as the rudder swung back to its amidships position.

  Another loud crack drew Josette’s eyes up to Ayezderhau. A second girder had failed aboard her, but the Vin ship was still in the sky, and still steaming forward with a strange placidity.

  She could picture the Vin captain racing back through the keel, arriving to find mangled girders, and calculating the forces in his head. She could picture it far too easily, for she had once done it herself, and saved her ship from destruction only by the quickest, most decisive action.

  But the Vin captain was not quite so quick, nor so decisive. A third girder snapped aboard Ayezderhau, its broken ends whipping out through her envelope near the tail. And then, a heartbeat behind, her keel tore itself apart. Josette saw it before she heard it—saw a rift opening on Ayezderhau’s underbelly, halfway between airscrews and tail, and then the envelope doubling up on itself as the great airship folded into a pathetic, V-shaped mass.

  It fell, keel still twisting around the break, objects tumbling out of it and coming down faster than the ship—mere dots at this distance. Equipment and sandbags, she hoped. Someone on Ayezderhau’s hurricane deck had the presence of mind to pull the emergency ballast ropes, and great gushes of water streamed from the underside of her envelope. She fell through three thousand feet in mere seconds, but grew lighter as she went. By the time she sank past Mistral, her fall was nearly arrested.

  She was still losing gas, however, and whatever crew remained were running out of ballast to throw overboard. And so Ayezderhau floated on the wind, drifting lower and lower, falling toward the city at a gentle pace.

  20

  “WELL THAT’S A stroke of good luck, isn’t it?”

  Bernat looked at Jutes, and found him grinning at the sky. “Ain’t so much luck, I think. Come on. We got an army to break outta jail.”

  There was no blind approach to the prisoner pen, so they had to advance on it right out in the open. But Mistral was driving down upon the Vin guards, filling more and more of the sky as she approached, which had a rather distracting effect on them. One rifle shot from the airship was all it took, and a dozen hardened fusiliers were begging Jutes and Bernat to accept their honorable surrender.

  And yet, even after the Vins dropped their muskets, and even with Mistral keeping a sharp-eyed overwatch, Bernat felt hopelessly exposed as he rounded up his prisoners. After all, might one of these fearless men not think it a worthy exchange, to trade his own paltry life for the chance to kill a nobleman of Bernat’s renown and importance?

  Luckily, the fusiliers were but crude accountants, and none of them tried anything. If Bernat hadn’t been occupied in freeing the Durumite prisoners, he might have been thoroughly insulted. With the pen open, townsfolk were spilling out with such vigor that they threatened to turn into a rampaging mob. The Vin airship’s destruction had restored their spirits, while the humiliation of the pen had brought their blood to a boil. Only Jutes’s sheer force of personality kept angry townsfolk from beating the helpless Vin prisoners to death.

  The crush to get out of the pen, the eagerness of the Durumites to take their revenge, was so great that many were pushed up against the cheval de frise, and cut their hands trying to keep off the blades. It was so bad that, above their heads, Josette began shouting at them through a speaking trumpet. “Mr. Kemal, you want to turn this into the same goddamn mess that got you caught in the first place? Mrs. Boyev, what would your late husband say if he could see you acting like this? Pierre, you have some sense. Get your brothers into line! Marcel, the Dumpling bastard who killed Madeena is on the wall, not there! Mr. Niyazi, would you sacrifice our chance to retake the town, just to lash out at a handful of the bastards? If we win, they’ll still be there! You can kill them later!”

  She went on like that, calling them by name and imploring them to order. And it worked. Her targets fell shamefacedly into line, one by one. Some even took it upon themselves to bring their fellows to order.

  “Sergeant Jutes,” she called down, pointing to the south, where the Vin airship had dipped to below the height of the town walls. “I want whatever luftgas is left in that ship. She hasn’t surrendered yet, so take as many men as you need to storm her. The others will go with Bernat and attack the breach.”

  Jutes gave an acknowledging signal and saluted. Mistral sprang to life, steaming for the western wall, where the sound of musketry was intensifying. “She knows we don’t have any weapons for these people apart from the few muskets we took from the Vins, doesn’t she?” Bernat asked.

  “She knows,” Jutes said, as he split his team off from the others.

  “Then what are my chances of taking the breach?”

  Jutes looked at him with an odd expression. “Zero,” he said.

  “Then what’s the point?”

  “General hellraising,” the sergeant said with a grin. “Don’t worry, sir. You’ll do great.” And with a bellowing war cry, Jutes charged toward the Vin airship, two dozen townsfolk on his heels.

  Bernat looked to those who were left, numbering several score at least. “Rar, grr, and such things!” he called, and hobbled toward the breach as fast as the pain in his leg would allow. When he dared to look back, he saw with relief, and no small measure of surprise, that they were all following.

  *   *   *

  JOSETTE LOOKED BACK over the taffrail until she was certain the mob was following Bernat, and then returned to her station.

  “Sir,” Kember said, leaning toward her, “you should really have your face looked to.”

  Josette made a point of ignoring her. “Rudderman, steer to cross the wall, then turn us parallel to it.”

  “In front of the wall, sir?” Luc Lupien asked. “Not behind it?”

  “Between our men and theirs,” she said, “to give them an example to follow.” After a moment’s further thought, she added to the elevator steersman, “But do keep us above the arc of their cannons. We needn’t get carried away.”

  As Mistral came up on the wall, Josette took the opportunity to get a couple of shots at them with the bref guns, but the Vin fusiliers again showed their steel, staying calm despite their peril. If they’d tried to rush out of the way they would have surely bunched up, and Kember’s well-aimed blasts of canister shot would have killed a score of them. As it was, the Vins laid flat on the wall, and as the smoke of the shots cleared aft, it was impossible to say what the effect was. The Vins’ makeshift wooden cover had two wide gaps in it, certainly, but no more than a handful of fusiliers were killed, if even that many.

  Josette shook her head. “Give me ten regiments like this one, and I’ll conquer half the world.”

  “Only half?” somebody asked as Mistral passed above the wall. She couldn’t make out the voice, for at that moment the fusiliers rose and fired a full volley into the ship’s underbelly. Apart from the crack of the discharge, there was the sound of snapping plywood along the keel, and the ping of bullets hitting the steamjack, but blessedly no screams.

  She ran her eyes over the hurricane deck. No one hurt. “Anyone hit?” she called up the companionway.

  Private Davies, at the relay position, answered her, “Grey’s hit in the arm—not mortal—and Chief Megusi has a graze. They were aiming amidships, at the steamjack, the clever bastards.”

  “Damage?” she asked, going halfway up the companionway ladder to look along the keel.

  Megusi’s voice came back, shaken but in control. “Most of them hit the boiler or the aft end of the turbine.” His face appeared around the trumpet flair of the turbine, soaked
with condensed steam. “No damage to the boiler, but until I can patch the turbine, I can only give you about a quarter power, and even that’s more risk than I like.”

  “One-quarter power, then. Carry on.”

  He saluted, which was absurd at a time like this, but she returned it out of habit before stepping back to her station.

  “Riflemen: steady, aimed fire on the wall. Steersmen, swing us in front of the Garnian companies assembled toward the rear.”

  Below them, whatever was left of the forlorn hope was still pinned in the breach. They hid behind any fragment of rubble large enough to provide protection from the murderous fire pouring into them from the jagged edges of the wall on either side of the breach. Some of them fired back, to little effect, and others simply huddled on the unstable scree slope, waiting for a miracle.

  A Garnian company had now advanced to within three hundred yards of the wall and was firing by platoon—though with none of the crisp, highly drilled efficiency of the Vin companies. Their muskets were worse than useless at that range, and such an ineffectual, amateurish fire would only boost the defenders’ morale. As near as Josette could work out, they’d been brought up to provide cover and allow the forlorn hope to retreat from the breach, but the men of the forlorn hope were smarter than their officers, and they knew the gambit wouldn’t work. Or perhaps it was simply that the men of the hope were frightened beyond the ability to act, which still put them well ahead of whatever idiot had ordered platoon fire at three hundred yards.

  She ordered a turn that would bring Mistral around in front of them, went to the rail with speaking trumpet in hand, and shouted down at the captain of the company, “What the hell are you doing back here?” She took great care to give her words the form of a question, but the tone of a relayed order. “The fight’s that way!”

  The Garnian infantry captain, no doubt thinking he’d missed an order, and that he’d be in a great deal of trouble if he didn’t show willing and advance with gusto, ordered his company into a quick march. It took some additional motivation from their sergeants, but the company was soon on the move.