The Doomsday Vault

by Steven Harper

  “All hands prepare for battle!”boomed the captain. “Drop ballast compression and take us up to fifteen hundred feet. We have two dozen gliders coming in. They’ll try to get over the netting to attack the decks, so I want everyone who can swing a sword or fire an air pistol up in the ropes! Mr. Thomas, prepare to jettison the cargo. Master Ennock, get your ass down to the gondola, and I mean now!”

  “Better hurry, boy,” Old Graf said as Gavin pulled the helmet off. “He won’t appreciate it if you’re slow.”

  Gavin shoved his fiddle into its case and ran for it. He skittered down the ladder to the main deck, which swarmed with activity. Airmen boiled out of the hatchways, rushing to ready the ship for battle. Ports flipped open along the hull, exposing flechette and harpoon guns. Men in white and gray leather manned the pumps that forced ballast air out of certain ballonets inside the Juniper’s envelope and inflated other ballonets with more hydrogen, allowing the ship to rise. Other men swarmed into the netting, climbing toward the envelope with compressed air pistols and cutlasses of tempered glass—only a fool used gunpowder or sparking steel near several tons of explosive hydrogen.

  Gavin ran to the center of the deck and slid down the rails of another ladder polished by years of use, pausing only to drop his fiddle off in the crew quarters, where he stuffed it under a blanket and prayed no pirate would find it. Then he ran back to the ladder.

  The Juniper was an American ship of American design. A web of wrist-thick ropes hung from an enormous, cigar-shaped envelope of gas and cradled what looked like a sailing ship with the masts removed. Fastened to the bottom of the ship and looking a bit like a glass bubble with a wooden bottom was the navigation gondola, where Pilot and the captain spent most of their time. Gavin dropped past two decks and out the bottom of the ship into the gondola.

  The floor was solid wood, but the sides of the gondola were made of glass to give a good view in all directions, and now Gavin could see the gliders skimming ominously toward the Juniper. Speaking tubes sprouted from every cranny, and pigeonholes held rolled-up charts and instruments. Captain Naismith stood at the helm, his fingers white on the wheel spokes and his plain features tense. His dark blue captain’s coat with its gold buttons and epaulets rustled not at all, and his hair remained hidden beneath his cap. Captain Naismith was a young man, not yet thirty, and he dealt with the grumblings of the much older men put under his command by expecting strict discipline from everyone, including himself.

  Beside him stood Pilot. Gavin had never learned his name—the pilot of an airship was always just called Pilot. He was perhaps forty, with a shock of wheat blond hair. At the moment, he was bent over a tableful of charts, his sextant clutched in one hand.

  “Sir,” Gavin said.

  “Master Ennock,” Captain Naismith said, “you were thirteen years old the last time we were attacked by privateers.”

  “Fourteen, sir. Two days after my birthday.”

  He waved this aside. “You wanted to fight, but I ordered you to hide in the cargo hold.”

  Gavin nodded. That had been a dreadful day. He remembered crouching among the crates and barrels with the rats, hearing thumps and screams and other noises he couldn’t identify. Part of him wanted to help, and part of him was glad for the captain’s order. The Juniper’s crew had managed to beat the pirates off and escape, but there had still been blood to scrub off the deck afterward, and Gavin had accidentally stepped on a severed hand that rolled beneath his boot. Only Old Graf had seen him throw up over the side.

  “Only full airmen carry weapons,” Captain Naismith continued, “but today we have special circumstances. Old Graf’s been teaching you, hasn’t he?”

  “Yes, sir.” Gavin’s heart was pounding now.

  “Take what you need from the arms master and get up in the netting. Defend my ship, Master Ennock. She’s only a merchant vessel, but she’s all we have.”

  “Sir!” And Gavin rushed up the ladder. He found the arms master belowdecks, and the man handed him a tempered glass cutlass and a heavy brass pistol that fired glass flechettes using compressed air. On the main deck, Gavin could see the gliders were less than a hundred yards away, and in the distance coasted the ominous shape of a pirate airship, emerging from the clouds like a killer whale rising from an ocean trench. Although the Juniper was gaining altitude, leaving the ocean far below, the pirate ship was matching them. The gliders drew nearer. Each held a pirate suspended beneath a wide wing of oiled silk on a light frame painted blue. A bottle of compressed air fizzled behind each one, propelling it forward. The bottle didn’t have enough propulsion in it for a return trip. It wasn’t meant to.

  “Fire!” shouted First Mate Lightman.

  A hiss snaked through the air, followed by a pop. Four of the side guns spat a barrage of deadly metal darts. Two of the gliders evaporated in a cloud of blood and silk. The wing on one of the others was clipped, and it spiraled out of sight, the pirate’s shouts of terror thinning away as it went. Gavin grabbed some of the heavy netting, climbing upward and outward, nimble as a monkey.

  The netting comprised heavy rope tied in foot-wide squares that slanted outward like a giant V, with the narrow ship in the bottom and the wide envelope at the top. Halfway up the netting were gaps and wooden platforms that allowed the airmen to work on both sides of the netting as needed, and these were the gliders’ targets—the pirates could slip through the gaps, drop down the inside, and land on the deck to attack the crew.

  “Fire!” The big guns hissed once more below.

  Gavin skittered farther up the slanted ropes. Here he felt at home, with nothing but free-flowing air rushing above and below him. He felt every creak and sway of the ship as if the ropes were his own tendons, the envelope his lungs, the deck his body. He loved this place, this ship. And now the Juniper was under attack.

  He was out of the envelope’s shadow, and the sun glared down from a clear sky while the damp wind pushed steadily from his left. He reached one of the gaps and perched on the heavy horizontal rope at the top. On the outer hull below whirled the propellers on their engine nacelles, and farther below that, blue ocean filled the horizon. Other airmen were taking up positions in other gaps and on various platforms, while the gliders closed in.

  A guy rope was tied to the netting. Gavin flicked it free but lost his grip on it. Another hand snatched the rope before the wind could swing it away. Airman Tom Danforth grinned at Gavin through a great deal of dark hair, and his brown eyes sparkled with excitement as he tossed the guy rope to Gavin. The captain had promoted Tom from cabin boy to airman only a few months ago on his eighteenth birthday, but his and Gavin’s friendship had survived the change in rank. Gavin sometimes envied seagoing cabin boys, who often became full sailors long before they turned eighteen, but the feeling never lasted long—he couldn’t imagine being stranded on Earth forever, an eternal prisoner of gravity.

  “Ready for this?” Tom asked.

  Gavin tried to wet his lips but had no spit. “Ready as I can be. You scared?”

  “Yep.” He gave a nervous smile. “But I’m not going to let them take our ship.”

  As if on cue, the flock of gliders rushed silently upward past the gunwale, out of range of the big guns and toward the netting gaps. Still clinging to the netting with one hand, Tom drew his pistol and fired down at them, but the shot went wide. An airman a few yards away—Stanley Barefield—fired more carefully, and one of the pirates went limp. His glider yawed and veered away. The Juniper continued to rise, which meant the gliders appeared to be dropping toward the gunwale. The gliders needed enough altitude to gain the gaps in the netting and land on the deck before their air bottles gave out.

  Gavin drew his pistol, fired, and missed. The ship’s guns spoke one more time, but Gavin doubted they did any good. More than two dozen gliders were swarming like wasps around the Juniper now, and the enormous bulk of the privateer airship was less than half a mile away. Its design was similar to the Juniper’s, but its envelope was thinner, bu
ilt more for speed, and painted blue to blend in with the sky. It was also larger than the Juniper, and no doubt better armed. Air pistols hissed, and glass flechettes zipped through the air. When the pirate ship got close enough, she would send a full force of fighting men to overwhelm the crew and capture the Juniper entirely. Gavin swallowed.

  “We’re in trouble,” he said.

  “I know.” Tom’s face was pale. “But we can win this.”

  A glider whipped close to Tom and Gavin. Tom brought his pistol around, but before he could shoot, the pirate fired his own weapon. The shot caught Tom in the forehead, and Gavin saw the shiny flechette exit the back of his friend’s skull in a burst of blood that spattered across the netting. Tom didn’t make a sound. He simply fell away from the netting and vanished into the blue void below.

  Gavin heard a terrible scream and only vaguely realized it was coming from his own throat. He didn’t remember dropping his pistol or drawing his cutlass, but he leapt from the netting and his blade swept a gleaming arc. He had a tiny moment of closeness, when he came eye to eye with the bearded pirate. He smelled fish on the other man’s breath and heard him swear in Welsh. Then Gavin’s cutlass took the man’s pistol arm off at the elbow. The pirate howled in pain and veered away in a scarlet spray. The guy rope Gavin had grabbed earlier swung him back toward the ship, but another glider was already speeding toward him. Gavin tightened his gut and bent himself upward into a tight ball just in time to let a barrage of flechettes pass beneath him. His arm, the one holding the rope, burned, and his shoulder felt ready to come apart. He slammed into the netting and managed to get his feet into it, release the rope, and grab the netting without losing his cutlass. He sheathed the blade and climbed, trying not to think of Tom’s spattered blood or ruined head.

  Although the airmen had managed to fend off a few, most of the pirate gliders had dived through the gaps and down toward the main deck. Cursing the loss of his pistol, Gavin flipped over the top of the netting, grabbed another guy rope, and slid down as fast as he could. All around him, the rest of the crew followed suit, sliding down ropes like pale spiders to defend the decks.

  The pirates disengaged from their gliders. They wore mismatched, ill-fit clothes, and a few were barefoot. Most were unshaven. All were armed with glass cutlasses and air pistols. And the huge dark bulk of the pirate airship was barely two hundred yards off the starboard bow, not quite within firing range. The airship had also taken altitude, remaining level with the Juniper.

  Gavin landed near a group of airmen that included Old Graf, and suddenly he was very busy. The world dissolved into a whirlwind of glittering glass blades, hissing air, screams, blood, and severed limbs. He became aware that he was standing beside a group of grim-faced airmen. The deck was overrun with pirates and discarded gliders. Bodies lay everywhere—some still living; some dead. And less than forty yards away loomed the bulging blue shape of the Welsh airship. Gavin could hear her propeller engines buzzing over the sounds of combat around him. His arms were growing tired, and he was panting now. He swung at the pirate in front of him. The man laughed and ducked.

  “You’re a fine, pretty lad,” the pirate shouted in a Welsh accent. “I’ll teach you some tricks with my blade.”

  There was a heavy thud, and a crash shook the Juniper. Everyone stopped fighting for a moment. The pirate ship had fired an enormous barbed harpoon. The tree-sized spear had penetrated the Juniper’s hull, drawing with it a hawser at least a foot in diameter. A faint cheer went up from the pirate ship. The two vessels were now joined like beads on a string.

  The fight started again, but something had shifted. The Juniper’s airmen were losing. Gavin saw Captain Naismith standing at the gunwale, a foot-long crossbow in his grip. A yellow flicker danced in his hands, and Gavin’s stomach went cold at the sight of a small open flame, the absolute bane of every airship in existence. The captain lit the end of his crossbow bolt and raised it, but no crossbow that small had the range to reach the pirate ship. A nauseating horror swept Gavin as he realized that the captain was aiming not at the pirate ship, but at the Juniper’s own envelope.

  The distraction allowed the pirate to swat Gavin’s cutlass. Pain stung Gavin’s hand, and the glass blade spun away, distorting light as it went. Gavin jumped back in time to avoid the pirate’s second swing, then fled. The airmen who fought beside him, caught in fights of their own, barely had time to give him a glance.

  “Come back, love!” the pirate yelled. “You need to dance for me!”

  Gavin all but flew across the deck to Captain Naismith. Already he could imagine the blazing bolt piercing the envelope, ripping into the ballonets of hydrogen to create a fireball that would incinerate the ship and drop the charred remains into the ocean. The detail was sharp—Gavin could see Naismith’s finger tense around the trigger. Heart pounding from both exertion and terror, Gavin lunged and grabbed Naismith’s arm.

  “Captain!” he shouted. “No!”

  “Let go my arm, Master Ennock,” he said through gritted teeth. “They won’t take my ship.”

  “We can’t get revenge if we’re dead,” Gavin said.

  A dull clanking noise vibrated the deck beneath Gavin’s boots. The pirates were operating a winch that pulled the two ships closer together. Fear fought with pale determination in Naismith’s expression.

  “It’s ransom or slavery for us, Master Ennock,” he said. “I can’t condemn my men to such a life.” He wrenched his arm free and raised the crossbow again. The dreadful little flame flickered like a demon.

  Gavin hesitated, uncertain. It would be so easy to let him. Naismith was the captain, and Gavin was duty-bound to follow his orders, orders that would destroy Tom’s killer. But Gavin wasn’t ready to die, and burning to death was the secret horror of every airman.

  In that moment of hesitation, Naismith’s finger tightened on the trigger. Then he made a small sound and collapsed face-forward to the deck. The crossbow fell also, the bolt extinguished. An enormous scarlet stain spread across the back of the captain’s blue coat. Behind him stood the pirate Gavin had just been fighting, air pistol still in his hand. He holstered the weapon.

  “Looks like I reloaded just in time, love,” he said with a grin. “Got me a captain.”

  Hot rage overcame Gavin. He snarled and flung himself at the pirate. The pirate’s eyes widened in surprise, but only for a moment. His fist lashed out and caught Gavin squarely in the face. Pain exploded through his head, and he went down to the hard deck.

  Gavin awoke to pain. Someone was dabbing at his cheek with a cloth. He opened his eyes and sat up. Light hurt his eyes and sitting up made him dizzy, so he shut his eyes and put his hands to his head. He shivered with cold.

  “You’re all right, son.” It was Old Graf’s voice. “Bump on the head, some bruises. You’ll survive.”

  Gavin risked opening his eyes again. He was sitting on the deck in the same place he had fallen. For a moment it looked as if everything had returned to normal. Airmen in white moved about the deck and climbed in the netting. Then he saw the stacks of dead bodies, the pools of blood, the gashes in the wood. The two ships were still tethered together, though now they were both moving off, continuing the Juniper’s original eastern course. The airmen weren’t the crew Gavin knew. They were the pirates. Gavin’s own leathers were gone. He wore nothing but undergarments and chilly skin. Old Graf himself wore a ragged shirt and torn trousers.

  “What—?” Gavin said.

  “The pirates took our good white leathers for themselves,” he said. “Keep your voice down. You don’t want to call attention to yourself. Here.” He gave Gavin a dirty brown shirt, a pair of loose trousers, and an old pair of shoes. Gavin quickly pulled them on, though they did little to blunt the ever-present wind. The pain in his head continued to throb, and he was thirsty.

  “A third of the crew dead, and Captain Naismith,” Old Graf said, unprompted. “Captain Keene—the pirate captain—put some of the ‘dangerous’ survivors off the ship
in life balloons already so we wouldn’t try to raise a mutiny.” He handed Gavin a canteen, and Gavin gulped down stale water. “The rest of us are expected to help run the ship until we get to London.”

  “London?” Gavin echoed stupidly. “We’re supposed to go to Madrid. I was going to see the castle.”

  “Tell that to Captain Keene,” Old Graf growled. “When we get to London, he’s going to sell the cargo and hold us and the Juniper for ransom to the shipping company.”

  Outrage cleared Gavin’s head a little. “That’s illegal! We’re not at war with England! That’s—”

  “Part of his letter of marque. Keene’s been charged with keeping the airways safe for British ships, and we fired on him first.”

  “No, we didn’t!” Gavin said hotly.

  “Shush!” Old Graf made a sharp gesture. “Who do you think a British court will believe, son? Just be glad you didn’t get tossed over in a life balloon.”

  “Why wasn’t I?” Gavin asked bitterly. “I’m just a cabin boy. The company won’t pay a ransom for me, and my family doesn’t have any money.”

  “He spoke for you.” Old Graf jerked his head toward one of the pirates, who was wearing stolen airman leathers and inspecting the hydrogen extractor on deck not far away. “Name’s Madoc Blue. Said he was going to teach you to dance or something.”

  Gavin’s gut knotted. Madoc Blue was the pirate who had killed Captain Naismith. As if Gavin’s thought caught Blue’s attention, the pirate turned and met Gavin’s eye. He winked broadly and went back to what he was doing. Gavin fought to keep his face impassive. He had a pretty good idea of what Blue had in mind for him, and the thought made him want to throw up.

  “So what do we do?” Gavin whispered.

  “We run the ship,” Old Graf said. “And when we get to London, we sit in whatever cell these bastards lock us in and hope the company pays our ransom.”

  Three days passed. Gavin fell into a stupor. His body mechanically went through his normal daily tasks under the watchful eye of armed pirates, but his mind was filled with a blessed fog. He scrubbed decks and sewed seams and spliced rope and ran messages for the new captain, all without truly thinking about what he did. At night, he slept fitfully in his hammock, dreaming of his family back in Boston. Sometimes he saw Tom plummeting into an abyss, but he wore Gavin’s own face. Then the pirate first mate would be shouting them awake, and a new day of captive work began. At least Madoc Blue kept his distance. Bernie Yost, the Juniper’s hydrogen man, had been killed in the original raid, and Captain Keene had given the job to Blue. Even the most tightly sewn ballonets leaked a little, and without continual replacement, the ship would eventually sink to the ground—or into the ocean. An efficient hydrogen extractor was therefore key to the survival of any working airship, and the job of hydrogen man carried the same status as ship’s carpenter or pilot. The job also took up a lot of time, which meant Blue was too busy to pay Gavin any heed.