The Guns Above

by Robyn Bennis

  “The ship we’re giving you is one of those … what do they call them, Gaston?”

  “Chasseurs, sir.”

  “It’s a chasseur,” the general said. “Do you know anything about flying chasseurs, Dupre?”

  “Osprey was a chasseur, sir.” The nearest thing to a warship in the air, a chasseur stood alone among airships, for only chasseurs were built to withstand the furious recoil of a cannon—albeit a specially designed, lightweight cannon known as a “bref gun.”

  “Well, I expect you’ll manage,” the general said. “The ship’s Mistral. It’s a new design.”

  Josette’s enthusiasm was momentarily checked, for the general had said the two words every airman dreaded: “new design.” Army flight engineers were forever searching for new and more efficient ways to get airmen killed. When they’d collected enough of them, they put them together in a devious package called a “new design.” But she took heart. At least he hadn’t said “revolutionary new design.”

  After a sip of tea, the general went on. “My advisors tell me that it’s quite revolutionary.”

  Her heart sank. Like most revolutions, the aerial sort left a lot of dead bodies in its wake, and the survivors no better off than before. She wondered if the general knew what he was doing. Was he trying to get rid of her, the woman the broadsheets had credited with his victory, by her fiery death if necessary? Or did he see her merely as the Crown’s latest pawn, to be obliterated if convenient, neutralized if necessary, or ignored if neither?

  “Do make sure you acquire the proper insignia,” the general said, casting a glance at her collar badge, which bore an image of crossed cannons and a single wing. She would have expected the army to provide her—at a public ceremony, no less—the double-winged collar badge appropriate to her new rank, along with epaulettes and sleeve badges for her dress uniform. It appeared that General Fieren, however, was of a mind that she ought to purchase or borrow them herself.

  “Well, I’m sure you have preparations to make,” the general said. “Don’t let me keep you any longer.”

  Josette saluted, and the general returned the salute with a lackadaisical motion. She left the museum in a daze, bumping into several exhibits and nearly knocking a bust off its column.

  Outside, she found Jutes resting against a parked cart. He looked up as she emerged.

  “You haven’t been waiting here, have you?” she asked.

  Jutes straightened up and made an innocent face. “Just out for a walk, sir. Happened by. How did it go?”

  “I have a ship,” she said, hardly believing it herself. “It’s going to be dangerous, though.”

  “Not a revolutionary new design, I hope.”

  “Actually, it is.”

  He grinned. “Then you’d best pick a sharp sergeant, sir, hadn’t you?”

  * * *

  INSIDE THE MUSEUM, the general looked perturbed. “She didn’t ask about a public promotion ceremony,” he said. “I was hoping she would.”

  Gaston cocked his head. “Were you planning to have a ceremony, sir?”

  “Of course I wasn’t, but I wanted to see her face when I refused it. Well, Bernie, are you ready?”

  Bernat was still staring off into the gallery in the direction Dupre had gone. “That woman is terrified,” he said.

  Fieran guffawed at the comment, and even the stolid Gaston twittered. “She’s what?” his uncle asked.

  “Terrified,” Bernat said, looking at them. “When you gave her a ship, she turned absolutely pallid. Couldn’t you see it?”

  Gaston twittered again, but the general was suddenly thoughtful. “That woman’s expression didn’t change once, the entire time she was here. What do you think, Gaston?”

  “If this had been a gallery of statues, sir, I think the museum staff would have dusted her by mistake.”

  Bernat shook his head. “You only have to…” He tried to think of how to explain it. “It was the way she stood, the way her eyes moved searchingly about the gallery, the way the corners of her lips twitched, the slight pauses where there shouldn’t have been any. It all points to one thing: the prospect of commanding this ship positively unnerves her. No doubt because she knows her competence is lacking. You really didn’t see it?”

  The general handed his cold tea to Gaston and harrumphed.

  “I hope you don’t play cards, Uncle. Any decent card player should be able to see that she’s bluffing.”

  “Perhaps you’re right.” The general pulled thoughtfully at his mustache. “I don’t know if you’re aware of this, Bernie, but that woman has been going around and selling her story to all the broadsheets, taking credit for my victory.”

  “I’ve seen the stories,” Bernat said, “though until now, I didn’t appreciate the implications.”

  “And now the Crown is rewarding her. Can you believe that?”

  “Truly, Uncle, it stretches belief.”

  “It all stems from this nonsense about a manpower shortage,” Fieren said. “We’ve suffered losses, certainly. You can’t fight a war without casualties, you know. But the army’s never been stronger. Morale’s never been higher!” His voice had slowly been increasing in volume, until by now it was echoing through the galleries. “But there are those, Bernie, in the palace and in the newspapers, who would see the army suffer under these fanciful experiments. They would see it turned into a prancing bunch of women, instead of the masculine army that God intended. They would do it merely to slake their hatred and jealousy of me. Of my success! Of my achievements!”

  And here Bernat saw his chance at deliverance. “But what can be done about it?” he asked calmly.

  “Nothing needs be done,” his uncle said, simmering and waving his hand. “She doesn’t suspect it, obviously, but she’s only a pawn in the Crown’s little game of pushing an integrated army. And you know what happens to pawns, don’t you, Bernie?”

  Bernat grinned back. “They march across the board and get promoted, if you don’t do anything to stop them. Shame there’s nothing to be done about this one. The broadsheets have their lies, and what can anyone say against the broadsheets, when they speak with one voice? You’d need someone on the inside to get the truth out.”

  “Then I have just the man,” Fieren said, as if he were about to drop something out of the clear blue sky. “I’m putting you on her new ship, and I want you to keep an eye on her.”

  “Me, Uncle?” Bernat asked, feigning surprise, but taking care not to overdo it lest he give away the game. “I’m not sure an ensign, useless as they are, is up to the task.”

  “Think on it, Bernie. If you can document evidence of her incompetence—something they can put in the papers, something that will end this foolishness—it will go very well for you.”

  Bernat looked up from thoughtful reflection, and a grin grew slowly on his face. “Very well,” he said. “But I’ll go as I am, not as an ensign. And I want ten liras’ salary per week, paid in advance starting today, and another two hundred and fifty when I’ve gotten rid of her for you.”

  The general could not have been more stunned if a tiger had leapt from the next room and swallowed Bernat whole. The teacup slipped from Gaston’s hand and smashed against the floor with a tinkling crash that echoed through the gallery.

  Bernat smiled. “It’s only the cost of a horse, Uncle.”

  4

  “THAT OUR SHIP?” Jutes asked. “She looks like a bloody sardine.”

  Josette tilted her head. Mistral did look like a sardine, her envelope bulbous in the middle, with a sleek tapered silhouette that curved smoothly into a sharp tail behind and a convex nose in front. The envelope of a typical chasseur looked more like a cigar.

  “The shape’s supposed to give her better gas capacity and improve her turning performance,” Josette said.

  “Got my doubts about that, sir,” Jutes said. “An’ I don’t see how they can make a curved girder as strong as a straight one. Don’t matter if she turns fast, if her tail snaps off doing it
.”

  Josette couldn’t deny it, but in that moment, as she walked underneath her ship, she didn’t care. Above her, the white cloth envelope had already been stretched over the superstructure’s plywood frame. Along the ship’s belly, though, the canvas hung open and the keel was exposed, awaiting installation of the engine. Above the keel, great luftgas bags nestled inside a rib cage of hoop girders.

  Mistral might indeed be a sardine, but it was her sardine, goddamn it.

  She leapt up and grabbed a longitudinal girder, by which she pulled herself up into the exposed keel. From there, she walked forward and climbed through sixty vertical feet of hoop girders to reach the rope ladder that led to the forward crow’s nest.

  She negotiated the ladder with ease and was soon in the crow’s nest, looking down at the envelope from above. The crow’s nest on Mistral was nothing so grand as its naval equivalent. It was really only a porthole cut in the top of the ship, a flap of fabric that could be peeled back and looked out of.

  From it, Josette could see Mistral’s top side, the ship’s fabric skin a dazzling white except where the Garnian eagle was painted on the tailfins. Josette lingered there, admiring the ship, until she saw the steamjack and boiler coming into the shed on a flatbed rail car. She descended the entire height of the ship so quickly that an observer might have been forgiven for worrying she’d fallen through it.

  As her feet came down on the shed floor, a faraway voice called out, “Ah, there you are!” She turned to see a young aristocrat walking toward her. He walked for some time, and was out of breath by the time he reached them. “Good God,” he said. “This place is bigger than it looks.”

  Such a large indoor space had a tendency to trick the eye, especially when two of the four airship berths were empty, and only the relatively slender Lapwing sat across from Mistral on the far side of the shed.

  “You’re Dupre,” the aristocrat said, when he finally caught his breath.

  She eyeballed him. “Surely. And you are?”

  He stood up straight, in a poor imitation of military attention. After giving one of the clumsiest salutes Josette had ever seen, he offered his hand and said, “Lord Bernat Manatio Jebrit Aoue Hinkal, son of His Lord the Marquis of Copia Lugon.”

  She realized that this was the fop she’d seen with Fieren yesterday. “So you’re General Lord Fieren’s … what?”

  * * *

  “NEPHEW,” BERNAT SAID, giving another salute to put her at ease. He’d been practicing all the way there.

  Dupre seemed ready to ask another question when, without warning, she pointed at one of the yardsmen working on the airship and bellowed, “You there! That strut is not your fucking footstool!” The words echoed through the cavernous space inside the shed.

  Bernat jumped back, thinking for a moment that she was yelling at him.

  The man Dupre was pointing at was easily three times her size. His foot hung poised and quivering above a thin plank running between two thicker boards. “Sorry, Cap’n,” he said.

  Josette glanced at Bernat. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. They like to stand on the struts. They’re more delicate than they look.”

  Bernat swallowed. “The men?”

  “The struts,” Josette said. “The struts run between the corner boards of the box girders, like rungs on a ladder. The more ignorant yardsmen—the ones who exaggerated their skills so they could get a signal base job and dodge the conscription gangs, no doubt—have a terrible habit of trying to climb on them.”

  “But proper airmen are too smart for that?”

  “I don’t know about that, but I’ve never met an airman who made the mistake twice.”

  Bernat laughed nervously. “Quick learners.”

  She spared him a glance. “Yeah. I imagine you learn a lot on the way down. Things like, ‘The ground sure comes up fast’ and ‘I should have stayed a farmer.’ By the way, what the hell are you doing here?” After a few moments, she added a grudging, “My lord.”

  “I’m here as an observer,” Bernat said. He began to look through the pockets of his jacket. “I have the paper here somewhere.”

  “Don’t trouble yourself for papers, my lord. Your word’s good with us. Just try to stay out of the way of moving objects, and if you have any questions, ask me or Sergeant Jutes.” She indicated the Brandheimian-looking fellow who was overseeing the installation of some mechanism into the ship’s belly.

  Well, that was easy. Bernat had expected some resistance, had foolishly worried that she might suspect his true mission, but the dumb bitch suspected nothing.

  She was mouthy, though, and he liked that. If only she were twenty years older, he might even consider taking her into his bed. As it stood, however, he would just have to ruin her as quickly and conveniently as he could, collect his money, and return to more important pursuits.

  * * *

  JOSETTE LEANED INTO the open boiler, her hips resting on the lip of the inspection hatch and her legs sticking out for balance. She ran her hand across the smooth surface inside the steam drum, checking for defects. When satisfied, she swung back and dropped to the ground next to Jutes.

  He only said, “Damn small boiler for a chasseur this size.”

  “They had to make up the weight,” Josette said. “Mistral was slated to get a boilerless engine. Some kind of new gas-combustion piston. Lightweight. No open flame. No ballast lost to steam.”

  Jutes gave a skeptical snort.

  “They never got it working, but by then she was half-built and they had to make do.” She watched as the yardsmen bolted the boiler back together, keeping an eye on them to make sure they tightened everything properly. It would be a pain in the ass to fix any shoddy work once the boiler was mounted in the keel, and quite deadly to take off without fixing it. “It’s a high-pressure design, though. The engineers say that it should provide the same power as a larger boiler.”

  Jutes snorted with even more derision. “If that’s true, sir, then how come they don’t just make ’em all like that?”

  “That’s the first question I asked the engineer liaison, and he told me…” The yardsmen had finished closing the steam drum and were hopping down from its railcar. Josette took a wrench from one of the yardmen as they passed and hopped up to check the tightness of the nuts herself. “He told me,” she said, reaching into the guts of the boiler and working her way around the drum, checking each nut in turn, “that a standard steamjack isn’t built to handle the pressure this boiler can provide. Our steamjack is.”

  Jutes did not look satisfied. “So why ain’t they building all the steamjacks like this one, too?”

  “That was my next question,” she said. She found a nut that didn’t pass muster and, after shooting a poisonous look at the yardsman who’d tightened it, put her foot against the outer surface of the boiler and heaved on the wrench. It took the strength of both arms and a leg, but she managed finally to tighten it to her satisfaction. “The answer is that our steamjack is also a revolutionary new design.”

  “Bugger me,” Jutes muttered. “So the entire damn engine, saving the water and the airscrews, is made of parts that no one’s ever flown with before?”

  “Actually,” Josette said, “the airscrews are also a new design. You’ll see when they install them. They only have two blades, like a scout’s airscrews.”

  Jutes looked at her like she was making a bad joke.

  “But,” she said, “they’re longer, with a more severe camber, which is meant to make up the difference. They look very stylish.”

  “Aye,” Jutes said. “They’ll sure look stylish, snapping off and tearing through the envelope. I’ll have to have a letter ready, saying how stylish that looks, so all I need to do on the way down is sign it.”

  “And it’s interesting that you mention the water, because—”

  “Ahem, excuse me?” Bernat waved his hand daintily. It seemed that he’d been trying to get their attention for some time before they noticed him. “It’s getting rather
near lunchtime. Would either of you like something from Oceane’s? My treat. I just need one of your men to go fetch it.”

  Josette arched an eyebrow. “The army will provide you with lunch,” she said. “We can’t spare anyone right now.”

  “Begging your pardon, sir,” Jutes said, his lips smacking together. “But the crew prospects should be gathering outside. Could send one of them.”

  Damn. She’d forgotten about the crew. “All right,” she said. “Jutes, why don’t you get to work picking out a crew, and you can send one of the prospects for your lunches.” She leaned close and lowered her voice. “Don’t let them see the ship, or you’ll scare half of them away—and the smarter half at that. Might be best not to mention who’s commanding her, either, if you can avoid it.”

  Jutes furrowed his brow.

  “Not all of them were in the infantry,” she said. “They may not look so kindly on Osprey’s casualty list.”

  He nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  Bernat butted in, still smiling like an idiot. “Any particular dish you’d prefer?”

  She looked at him. “Nothing for me, thank you.”

  “You don’t know what you’re missing,” Bernat said. “They make the most wonderful beef kofta, with fresh garlic and ginger. You’ll never taste better.”

  “Another time,” Josette said. “But why don’t you accompany Sergeant Jutes and observe the crew selection? It’s a truly fascinating affair.” And it would pawn the fop off on someone else.

  * * *

  “SO, HOW’S LIFE in the army treating you, Sergeant Jutes?” Bernat asked on their way across the airfield.

  Jutes didn’t look at him as he limped along. “Apart from a punctured leg, bad food when there’s even food to be had, and—like as not—a fiery death aboard an untested airship, I can’t complain, my lord.”

  Bernat turned pale. “Not aboard that airship, surely?”

  “What airship did you think I was referring to, my lord?”

  Bernat looked over his shoulder, back at the shed. “Surely you jest. A fiery death? I was under the impression that luftgas was not flammable. I’ve been assured of that, by several of my most intellectually snobby acquaintances.”