The Guns Above

by Robyn Bennis

  Bernat gave her a shallow bow and a warm smile before following after Jutes. She returned the bow but not the smile.

  When they returned to the shed a quarter of an hour later, Jutes and Bernat had two officers in tow. As they approached, Josette recognized the scrawny, tall one as Junior Lieutenant Nicolas Martel, her new first officer. She asked as he approached, “What’ve you been up to, Nic?”

  Martel grinned. “Counting days until I have the time in rank for a promotion to senior lieutenant, so I can get my own damn ship.”

  “I wonder what that must be like,” Josette said. She’d spent nearly ten years as an auxiliary junior lieutenant, so long that she could have earned her senior lieutenant’s wings five times over if she’d been born with different anatomy. “Where the hell have you been? You were supposed to be here hours ago.”

  “Our damn train was stuck on a side track while the regular army used both the main ones to send regiments north. Oh, and this is Ensign Kember.” Martel stepped aside and indicated the raven-haired girl of about fifteen who lingered behind him.

  Kember straightened up and saluted so awkwardly that she poked herself in the eye. As the eye reddened and watered, she tried to hold it open, but she couldn’t stop blinking.

  “Ensign,” Josette said, taking special care to not notice the girl’s ocular flailing. “Please supervise things here. Nic, let’s visit the warehouse and get our ship outfitted.”

  Martel looked through the shed door, at the darkness outside. “Will the quartermaster be in at this hour?”

  “No, she won’t,” Josette said, “and that’s the point.”

  He grinned and said, “Very good, sir.”

  At that time of the evening, the quartermaster’s office was staffed by a single clerk, who slid the book he’d been reading under a stack of papers when Josette and Martel entered.

  Josette walked up to the desk and casually brushed the papers aside. “Memoirs of a Woman of Ill-Repute,” she said. “That’s a damn fine book.”

  The cover was blank, giving no indication of the book’s title or pornographic content. The clerk looked at her with wondering eyes.

  “I recognize the scuff marks,” Josette said. “That book’s been passed around more than the titular character. What are you up to, chapter seven? That’s my favorite one.”

  Behind her, Martel chimed in, “Chapter eight is my favorite. Those twenty-seven pages have gotten me through many a long flight.”

  The clerk quietly slid the paperwork back over the book and asked, “So, umm, what may I do for you, sirs?”

  “We’re outfitting Mistral,” Josette said.

  “Oh.” The clerk fidgeted awkwardly. “Sorry, sir, but I can’t let you into the warehouse, or issue you ordnance and supplies, until the quartermaster returns in the morning. She left very specific instructions.”

  Josette narrowed her eyes. “These instructions specified me by name, I imagine?”

  The clerk cleared his throat and looked away. “Not entirely by name, sir. Not unless you have an unusually long and profane first name.”

  She leaned over the desk and said, “It’s Private Corne, right?” The clerk nodded. “Private Corne, perhaps if you forget those instructions, we’ll forget what we saw you reading while on duty.”

  The clerk thought for only a moment. “Sorry, sir, I can’t help you.”

  She should have known threats wouldn’t work. The quartermaster might yell at Corne for the book, but she’d skin him alive if he opened the warehouse.

  But what the hell else could she do? If she somehow managed to drag the quartermaster out here, and somehow convinced her to open her stores, the spiteful bitch would see to it that Mistral got the worst of everything. She’d end up with rotten cordage, caked gunpowder, and spoiled rations. As Josette was weighing the question, Martel walked up and sat on the edge of the desk. He looked at the slender clerk, smiled, and said, “What are you doing in the quartermaster’s office, anyway? A man like you ought to be in the air.”

  Something in the clerk’s demeanor shifted. Josette couldn’t put her finger on precisely what it was, but it reminded her of a dog scenting food. “I volunteered for Mistral today,” Corne said. “I volunteer for every new crew, but I haven’t been picked yet, sir.”

  As he scooted further onto the desk, Martel said, “I think that’s an unfortunate oversight. Don’t you think so, Captain?”

  “Oh, indeed,” she said. “Not ten minutes ago, Sergeant Jutes was indicating his regret at not picking a certain man, and I do believe you match his description. If you could see your way to letting us into the warehouse, Private, we could clear up that mistake.”

  “But the quartermaster…”

  Martel flashed him a smile and said, “Will be a thousand feet below your heels, come morning.”

  Corne fished in a desk drawer, then slapped a key into Martel’s waiting hand. “I’ll hitch a cart for the supplies,” he said.

  Josette watched the clerk run from the room, then looked back to Martel, who was beaming at her. “Well done,” she said.

  “My pleasure,” Martel said, trotting ahead and unlocking the door to the warehouse. “I only hope the extra weight won’t be a problem.”

  As they stepped inside the sprawling but neatly ordered warehouse, Josette said, “I’ll have Jutes dismiss someone to make it up. Now, look for good powder, shot, flints, and rations. Don’t take anything we aren’t entitled to, but take the best of it. I’ll look for good cordage, cannons, and muskets.”

  She found the muskets first, and was just hefting a crate when she noticed, in a separate stack a few feet away, twenty crates with BREWER RIFLE written on their sides. She could hardly believe it, until she opened a crate and checked for herself. She reverently lifted one of the rifles, pulled the hammer back to full cock, and sighted down the three-foot barrel.

  “I want to take this gun to bed and make a baby with it,” she said.

  “Sir?” Martel asked.

  She quickly set the rifle back into its slot inside the crate and said, “Nothing.”

  Martel wandered over anyway. “Are these meant to replace our muskets?” he asked, as he looked the rifles over.

  “I don’t know,” Josette said. “I’ve been requesting rifles for air crews for years now. But every time I put in a request, I get a letter back informing me that rifles take too long to load, and politely suggesting that I stop asking for them. But perhaps they’ve finally come around.” She closed the crate and lifted it. “All I know is that I took a crate of them, thinking they were the muskets to which we were entitled. By the time I opened it and noticed they were rifles, we were already in the air and it was too late to return them.” She took a crate of ten rifles and headed for the outer doors, where Private Corne was busy hitching a cart.

  As she walked, she heard the stack of crates rattle behind her, and looked back to see Martel lifting a second crate. He grinned and said, “All I know is, I had no idea my captain already took possession of the ship’s small arms. By the time I discovered the error, we were already in the air, and it was too late to return the excess.”

  “An unconscionable mistake,” Josette said. “When you do finally discover it, please consider yourself reprimanded.”

  Martel grinned again. “Yes, sir.”

  * * *

  “HOW MUCH LONGER will this take?” Bernat asked Sergeant Jutes. “The ship looked perfectly ready to go when I arrived.”

  Jutes eyeballed him. “It didn’t have an engine in it, my lord.”

  “Well, of course not, but it has an engine now, I think. So how much longer will it take?”

  Before Jutes could answer, Ensign Kember approached, and the sergeant snapped instantly to attention. Bernat was about to wave his hand in front of the man’s eyes when the ensign spoke for him. “It’ll be at least four in the morning before all the rigging is done, but we’ll most likely put the launch off until dawn.”

  “Dawn?” Bernat asked.


  “Best time to launch an airship, my lord. Light winds, and the envelope warms up faster than the outside air, which gives us a bit of extra lift.”

  Bernat made a sour face. “What’s the point of human flight, if it’s so dreadfully inconvenient? I think I’ll retire for the night and come back at dawn.”

  The little ensign nodded. “If you’re sleepy, Sergeant Jutes will see you home, my lord.”

  Bernat had never said he was sleepy. “Oh, that isn’t necessary.”

  “It’s no trouble at all,” Kember said.

  It seemed to Bernat that the ensign could not possibly know how much or how little trouble it would be to Sergeant Jutes, but Jutes dutifully accompanied Bernat without complaint or apparent displeasure. When they were out of the hanger, Bernat said to him, “She’s awfully bossy toward you for a little girl, isn’t she?”

  Jutes showed no sign of agreement. “She’s a commissioned officer and I ain’t,” he said. “If she ain’t being bossy, she’s doing it wrong.”

  “It seems odd though, doesn’t it, that she’s ordering you around, when you’ve been in the army longer than she’s been alive?”

  “That’s the way of the world, my lord.”

  Bernat smiled inwardly. He had Jutes escort him to his hotel, and as soon as the sergeant was out of sight, he proceeded from there to the nearest card hall. He purchased an ivory pocket notebook from a man desperate to cobble together money for his stake, and between hands he began composing the missive that would end Dupre:

  The common airman, and he must certainly be considered the preeminent authority on the subject, does not look favorably upon his female shipmates. Indeed, those with the most experience are inclined to forbid women from the service altogether. The female officers, including Lieutenant Dupre, see this and fear that their shrewlike behavior may not be tolerated for much longer. They therefore treat these experienced men with the most egregious, spirit-breaking disrespect, as if they were commanding the meanest hired servants rather than proud fighting men with decades of meritorious service.

  * * *

  DAWN WAS ONLY a pale promise in the eastern sky when the crew arrived for weigh-in. Many of them blanched when they saw the shape of their new ship, and more still when they saw the shape of her captain. Josette kept one eye on the ship and one on the crew as they assembled in single file, baggage slung over their shoulders. Jutes stood nearby with chalk and slate in hand.

  “Nothing goes on the ship if you don’t take it on the scale with you,” he said. “And you don’t get on the scale unless you got your jacket, harness, cap, and goggles where I can see them. Private Corne, you’re first.”

  Corne stopped fumbling with his safety harness and took a spritely step onto the big scale. Jutes slid the counterweights back and forth until they balanced out at two hundred pounds. And then, without word or warning, he snatched Corne’s bag from his shoulder, shoved his hand deep within, and pulled out a bottle of cheap wine.

  Corne babbled a barely coherent string of apologies and denials, but Jutes wasn’t even listening. He upended the bag and spilled its contents on the shed floor. They included two more wine bottles, half a dozen woolen socks, underclothes, a quarter wedge of cheese, and two shaving kits. After prodding the shaving kits with his boot and making a show of counting them on his fingers, Jutes leaned over and rifled through the woolens.

  He came up shouting. “Luc Lupien! Will you kindly explain why this man is carrying socks with your bloody initials sewn into them?”

  Corporal Lupien stepped forward and stood at attention, his bag hanging limp and half-full on his shoulder. He cleared his throat and said, “Those are common initials, Sarge. Maybe they’re the initials of the lady who sewed the socks? You know, kind of signing her work.”

  “Did you hear that, Private?” Jutes asked Corne. “Corporal Lupien has generously volunteered to carry all of your baggage along with his. Lupien, repack all this or you’ll miss your turn.” As Lupien bent to retrieve a wine bottle, Jutes roared, “Leave the spirits unless you want to be one!”

  Satisfied that the situation was well under control, Josette left things to Jutes and went to finish some last-minute paperwork. By the time she returned, the crew had been weighed in and loaded aboard, and the fop still hadn’t made an appearance. With any luck, he would miss the boat.

  She took one final walk around the ship, gathered her things, and ascended the ladder. “Coming aboard,” she said at the top, and vaulted over the rail to the hurricane deck, which was crowded with newly installed instruments of flight and war. The bref guns had been emplaced with their muzzles run out through ports in the front railing. A pair of wooden steering wheels had been installed ahead and to either side of the companionway ladder, but aligned to face outward—unlike those of a naval vessel, which faced forward. Safety lines, called “jack lines” after the fashion of the navy, were suspended overhead, under a wicker catwalk that ran through the keel above. Between the jack lines there was an array of colored pull-cords, which ran into and along the keel, then turned up or down to attach to valves which could vent luftgas to make the ship heavier or release water ballast to lighten it. A cluttered bank of gauges and indicators filled what little space was left overhead, displaying the time, temperature, pressure, airspeed, inclination, heading, and altitude.

  And then there was a spot, just forward of the wheels in the middle of the deck, in view of the instruments and in easy reach of every pull-cord. It was not marked or designated in any way. It looked exactly like every other patch of the wicker deck.

  But the crew gave it deference. As they bustled about, making their last-minute preparations, they stepped lightly around it, as if around a basket of eggs. Josette stepped to the edge of the invisible barrier surrounding that sacred spot on the deck. She looked down at it and took a breath.

  She stepped into it, faced forward, and at that moment ceased to be Senior Lieutenant Dupre and became Captain Dupre of Mistral. The change was purely ceremonial, an empty title borrowed from the traditions of the navy, and yet she felt suddenly heavier.

  In the hush that came over the deck, she said, “Weigh off and rig for the mast.”

  The crew set to work. Once moored to the mobile mast, Mistral would be ferried out to the airfield. What’s more, they would be “flying the mast”—off the ground, albeit only by a couple of yards—meaning that Josette would no longer be obliged to bring the fop aboard.

  She almost made it, too. They were nearly secured when she heard an annoying voice shout from the shed floor, “Ahoy up there! The airship, ahoy! Permission to come aboard!”

  Jutes went to the rail and looked down. “We ain’t in the navy, Yer Excellency. You don’t need to ask permission. Just make sure you announce yourself when you step on, so we can adjust the ballast.”

  Bernat stuck his head over the rail and asked, “If permission isn’t required, how do you keep interlopers off the ship?”

  “By virtue of it being an airship, Yer Excellency,” Jutes said. “A thing which no sane or rational soul would ever wish to sneak onto.”

  At length, Bernat came over the rail with two heavy bags. He had his harness on upside down, with the leg loops secured around his shoulders and the shoulder straps hugging his crotch. Josette chose not to point out the error.

  “We are weighed off, sir,” Kember said, once sandbags had been dropped to account for Bernat and his baggage.

  “Take us out,” Josette said.

  Two dozen yardsmen pushed the mobile mast forward, and Mistral lurched forward along with it, out of the shed and into the dim purple light outside. Other yardsmen walked alongside, holding lines attached to Mistral’s keel, which they could heave on to correct for any crosswinds as she left the hangar. Yet more yardsmen walked beside the hurricane deck, holding handles on its underside, in case their weight was needed to bring Mistral down from an errant gust.

  The eastern sky was rosy when they arrived at their launch circle, with streaks of orange
slicing up through scattered clouds on the horizon. At the order, “Bring her into the wind,” the ground crew tugged the ship around until she faced the light morning breeze bow-on, and then the bustle of activity abated.

  Bernat, who had been loitering about the starboard side of the hurricane deck, seemed confused by the repose. “What now?”

  “We watch the sunrise, of course.”

  She expected some further inquiry about this, but the fop only frowned and seemed to make a mental note of it. They watched the sunrise and, more pertinently, let the luftgas soak up heat that would grant them additional buoyancy in the still-cool morning air. This in turn would allow Mistral to carry more ballast in the form of sandbags handed aboard by yardsmen, the additional weight of which might forestall the need to vent luftgas later on.

  When Josette judged that they were at their peak of buoyancy, she turned and looked up the companionway, where Jutes had his station inside the keel. “Spin up the steamjack,” she said.

  Jutes relayed the order, and Josette could hear the mechanics making a flurry of adjustments that brought on an angry hiss of steam from the boiler. The hiss was eclipsed by the sound of the steamjack, which slowly rose in volume and pitch until it became a shrieking whine.

  “Is this normal?” Bernat asked, raising his voice to be heard. He looked rather perturbed.

  Josette shrugged her shoulders and said, “I’ve never heard this exact sound before, except once from the Fulmar, just before it exploded.”

  He stared at her for a while, eyes wide and mouth open, until he seemed to notice that the crew was unalarmed. “Very droll,” he said, with resentment in his eyes.

  “Cast off mast,” Josette said, in lieu of a reply.

  Above her head, the wicker catwalk bulged down as the monkey rigger ran forward along the keel. Plywood creaked forward as the rigger scrambled through the ever-narrowing keel toward the bow. Seconds later, Josette heard the rigger call, “Mast cast off.”

  Jutes repeated it at a bellow. “Mast is cast off!”

  “Cast off all lines.”

  Kember went to the rail and shouted the order to the ground crew, then reported, “We are free forward, sir.”