The Guns Above

by Robyn Bennis

  “Transfer aft,” she called back. “Continue this turn.”

  Lupien went up the companionway. The elevator steersman turned to follow.

  “Is your cable also cut, Private?” Josette asked him.

  He turned and shook his head.

  “Then I will thank you to remain at your station on the hurricane deck.”

  She went to the rail, where Bernat was retrieving a fresh rifle for himself. Her second rifleman, as well as her loader, were kneeling over the wounded rifleman.

  She tapped the loader with her boot, though some might have called it a kick, and said, “He’ll live. Drag him out of the way and get back to work, both of you.”

  Bernat fired another shot. His sixth, she thought. She looked across to the enemy ship, where all three swivel guns were being frantically reloaded by unscathed cannoneers. How in hell had this battle turned so bad, so fast?

  “You haven’t hit anything?” she asked. “What the hell’s wrong with you? When the target was road markers, you couldn’t miss, but when it actually counts, you turn into an incompetent?”

  Bernat looked at her, his face red. “It’s different. That … that…” He pointed to the nearest swivel gun port on the Vin ship, and shouted, “That’s a person!”

  “It is different.” She took a rifle and brought it up to her shoulder. “People are a good deal larger than markers.”

  She did not aim at the nearest of the enemy swivel ports, around which a cluster of holes showed the meager fruits of Bernat’s rifle work. She aimed instead at the farthest port, the one nearest the scout’s bow and Mistral’s stern, where the Vin cannoneer’s next shot might spring a tail girder her ship couldn’t afford to lose.

  Josette was just about to shoot, when Kiffer redoubled his screaming. She paused just long enough to push the sounds out of her mind, aimed again, and fired. The rifle kicked into her shoulder and her vision filled with smoke. She didn’t wait for it to clear. She held out her rifle and exchanged it for a fresh one.

  She aimed at the farthest port again, but as the smoke cleared, all she could see there was a swivel gun rocking back and forth on its mount, without a cannoneer to service it. She swung the rifle forward to the middle port, where the Vin cannoneer was ramming a bag of musket shot into his muzzle.

  She fired. The flash burned her cheek and singed her hair. The loader, in his haste, must have put too much powder in the rifle’s pan. But the gun had fired, so she ignored the pain, held her spent rifle out, and exchanged it for another.

  At the farthest port, the swivel was still unmanned. No one had relieved the dead cannoneer. The middle port was also empty. She swung her rifle aft along the enemy ship, to the swivel port nearest her. She found herself staring across the gap between ships and straight down the barrel of a loaded swivel gun. The cannoneer was staring back at her, sighting along the thick barrel as he scrambled to cock the flintlock. He was terrified, working frantically.

  Josette did not hurry. She aimed directly at the cannoneer, as there was no need to account for wind or gravity at this range. She took a breath, let half of it out, and squeezed the trigger.

  The instant the smoke leapt from her rifle’s barrel, she dropped her calm demeanor along with her rifle. She grabbed Bernat and dove headlong for the deck, expecting the railing to explode into splinters under a hail of musket balls.

  But nothing happened. She lifted her head to see Bernat sitting up, brushing off his coat. He looked at her and cleared his throat. “I was just about to say, that was a very clever shot. Got him right through the head before he could fire.”

  She sat up and looked around. “Thank you.” She sprang to her feet. A crewman had already thrust a fresh rifle into her hands.

  Bernat was only now rising. “I believe that puts you three shots ahead of me, for today.”

  She handed him the rifle. “You can make it up if you keep them from remanning those swivels.” She looked over the side. The Vin scout was about to cut across Mistral’s wake, a position from which the Dumplings could rake her stern.

  Josette looked up the companionway to Jutes. “Pass word to the rudderman: left rudder, as hard as he dares, and then another turn past that.” When Jutes relayed the order, she added, “And tell Kember to get back to her goddamn post.”

  Jutes didn’t have time to relay that order. Ensign Kember was already coming down the companionway, her uniform smeared with blood. She stopped at the bottom and stood at attention, but her eyes were locked on Chips’s saw as it rocked forward, cutting through the last splinters of Kiffer’s femur. She said, “I got tourniquets around Private Corne’s wrists. I think he’s going to live.”

  “It’s an unjust world,” Josette said. She regretted the comment before it was even out, but not quite enough to stop herself from saying it. “If you would kindly man your gun, Ensign.”

  Mistral was already swinging around to port. Aft, her tail swung past the scout from bow to stern. Josette heard one of the swivel guns firing, then another, accompanied by the patter of musket balls piercing the canvas and striking girders in the tail. She reached up to feel a girder, her eyes on Jutes.

  Jutes was looking aft along the keel. When he looked back, he gave her a reassuring nod and said, “Tail’s holding, sir.”

  Now she had them. She went to the port rail, Bernat following with a rifle. They both looked out. The scout had come full circle and farther still, and was not reversing its turn, but heading for the cloud bank to the east.

  Too late for that, though. If the Vins had come out of their turn heading straight east, and resisted the opportunity to rake Mistral’s stern, they would have made it into the clouds before Mistral could come within canister range. As it stood, Mistral would certainly get one good canister shot in.

  She returned to her spot just as Chips, the powder monkey, and a cannoneer from the port gun dragged Kiffer past. Even when dragging the wounded man, they detoured around the captain’s spot, leaving a curved trail of blood behind them. Kiffer had stopped screaming at some point, she couldn’t remember when, and was now staring blankly ahead, his face ashen.

  The leg still lay embedded in the deck. “Get that, would you?” she asked one of the idle cannoneers. Unwilling to touch the thing, the man pushed at it with a rammer until it fell free.

  To her left, Bernat fired his rifle, then stood waiting for the smoke to clear before he took another. “Blast,” he muttered. He fired again, and twice more as Mistral came about. Her remaining bref gun had almost come to bear before Bernat, squinting through the smoke from his next shot, said, “My God, I hit him.” He lowered the gun, still holding it tightly in his hands. His tone wasn’t of jubilance or even surprise. It was horror.

  “Well done, my lord,” Josette said. She looked forward. “Ensign, we’ve lost the rudder cable, so you’ll have to fire as we swing past.” They still weren’t close enough to deploy their most deadly munition—canister shot—so they’d have to make do with medium-range shell shot in the meantime.

  Kember was already crouching behind her gun. Mistral’s turn brought the gun to bear on the scout ship, and Kember pulled the lanyard.

  Without martingales to hold it steady, the deck rocked wildly with the recoil. As the smoke cleared, Josette could see the narrow trail of smoke left by the shell as it curved directly into the top of the enemy’s envelope. It had gone straight through without detonating, and the smoke trail sputtered out on the other side—the mark of a faulty fuse.

  “Reload with canister,” she ordered. The port gun crew was a man short, so she went forward and swabbed the gun herself, picked up the rammer, and pushed first the linen bag containing the gunpowder charge, then the cylindrical canister shot down the barrel. Mistral had by now swung past the target. She called to Jutes as she pulled the rammer free, “Pass the word: right rudder!”

  This was the last shot she’d have before the scout reached the relative safety of the clouds, but with this single shot of canister, Mistral would return twi
ce as many musket balls as the scout had fired so far during the entire engagement.

  Josette remained forward, looking over the rail as the crew ran out the gun. Kember wrapped the lanyard an extra turn around her hand. This one final shot would determine whether Mistral’s next dispatch would contain news of her first victory, or be filled with excuses for paying such a high price in blood and materiel for no gain.

  The bref gun was almost aligned when a port opened on the scout’s tail. Josette thought they were going to fire another rocket but, just as the ships were lined up, a Vin officer stuck his head and shoulders out and shot off a flare.

  “Hold fire!” Josette said, but it was too late. The lanyard was pulled, the flint already sparking. Inside the gun, the priming ignited the charge, and the outer tin casing of the canister shot disintegrated under the force of half a pound of gunpowder. Eight-score musket balls were released and careened down the barrel to spread into a cone of destruction that billowed out in front of Mistral and tore into the scout’s tail.

  The flare from the Vin ship burst inside the cannon smoke, filling Mistral’s hurricane deck with the brilliant blue light that signaled an airship’s surrender.

  Kember gasped when she saw it. “I thought it was a rocket,” she said. “I thought it was a rocket.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Josette said. The smoke cleared to reveal a tangled mass of wreckage where the scout’s tail had been. The top fin now hung below the rest, suspended by its control line, swinging pendulously back and forth. The other three fins were bent and inoperable, leaving the scout lurching down and to starboard in an uncontrolled spiral. The man who’d fired the flare was gone. Just gone.

  “I thought it was a rocket,” Kember said.

  Mistral was passing above the stricken ship, but Josette wanted to keep it in sight. “Pass the word: rudderman come to seventy-five degrees east.” She ran to the side rail and leaned far over. The scout hadn’t torn itself apart yet, so it still had a chance. It was buckling and losing gas at an alarming rate, but if the Vins could drop enough ballast, they just might come to a hard but survivable landing.

  A cheer ran along Mistral’s keel, as word spread aft from the hurricane deck. Underneath that sound, and underneath the cry of the steamjack and the thrum of the airscrews, something caught Josette’s ears. It was a strange hissing, wailing sound. Perhaps a leak in Mistral’s condenser? No, that wasn’t quite right; as it grew louder, she knew that it wasn’t coming from Mistral.

  “I thought it was a rocket,” Kember said, next to her.

  “Shut up.”

  Josette retrieved the speaking trumpet, put the mouth end over her ear, and pointed it at the scout. The Vins were still spiraling downward, more slowly now that they were tossing everything but the keel girders over the side. Josette closed her eyes and pushed all other noises out of her mind, to focus on that one keening sound.

  Her eyes opened. “We’ve shot away their governor.”

  From across the deck, Bernat asked, “Were they carrying politicians?”

  “It keeps their steamjack from spinning too fast and tearing itself apart.”

  Bernat joined them at the rail, as Kember turned her attention to the scout. “Why don’t they just open the boiler safety valve?” she asked. It was the obvious solution. With the valve open, the pressure in the boiler would fall, and the scout’s steamjack would come to a stop on its own.

  Josette watched, inching along the deck to keep the scout in view as Mistral turned toward it. She was expecting, at any moment, to see a jet of steam from the safety valve. It didn’t come, and she suddenly realized why. “We killed their mechanics,” she said. She looked back. “Four degrees down angle on the bow. Pass the word to Gears: reduce engine power to one-quarter.” She was about to order Kember to rig the signal lamp, but when she turned, she saw the ensign already doing it.

  Mistral dove after the Vinzhalian ship, her bow pointed down at the center of its spiral descent. The wailing keen was growing louder now, warbling in bizarre ululations that silenced the celebrations aboard Mistral.

  Then there came a new sound: grinding, as some damn fool on the stricken ship disengaged the airscrews. He probably meant to save their gearbox from tearing itself apart, but he’d only made the peril worse by removing the only thing that held the steamjack’s speed back—the last force that was keeping it from spinning out of control.

  The grinding soon stopped, but the wail rose in pitch, becoming a scream so loud it echoed off the ground half a mile below, returning as a hollow whistle. And then there was another new sound, a screeching, nails-on-slate noise below the others. Together they tore into Josette’s ears and seemed to claw at the very bones of her skull. No banshee’s wail could be so painful or so disquieting.

  Kember had the signal lamp ready to transmit, but Josette took the lamp personally and asked Bernat, “Do you know how to say, ‘open your boiler’s safety valve’ in Vinzhalian?”

  Bernat thought for a moment. “I don’t know their word for boiler, or valve. What about ‘open your kettle’s safety opening?’”

  “It’ll have to do. Spell it out for me, letter by letter.”

  He called the letters out and she relayed the message, shutters clacking open and closed in front of the quicklime lamp.

  “Again,” she said. The nails-on-slate sound was growing to eclipse the others. Halfway through the second transmission, there was a crash from the scout ship. A turbine blade had come free of the dying steamjack. It tore upward through the scout’s envelope, rose past Mistral, and then fell in a long ballistic arc, trailing smoke. Josette completed the second transmission and said, “Again.”

  She made it through three letters before the Vin steamjack spun apart, shedding ragged strips of twisted, smoking metal that shot through the scout’s keel and envelope as if they were insubstantial. A second later, the boiler blew apart with such force that the sound was felt more than heard.

  Before the eye could perceive the split, the scout was in two pieces on either side of an expanding, obscuring white cloud. A second fat column of steam blew directly upward. It looked like the smoke from a cannon.

  It reached high enough to cross directly in front of Mistral’s path, and it was too late to turn out of the way. Mistral hit the column bow-on and was buffeted skyward in the sudden updraft. The steam swept along the envelope and over the hurricane deck, hot enough to sear the face and burn the lungs. Only her goggles allowed Josette to keep her eyes open.

  In seconds they were through it, the cool air on the other side as soothing as ice. Josette ran to the back of the deck and looked down over the taffrail to see fires glowing, incongruously beautiful, in the heart of the cloud.

  Above, droplets of boiler water pattered against the top of Mistral’s envelope. Below, tendrils of thick black smoke traced the paths of the burning wreckage through the larger cloud of steam. A large section of the scout’s envelope fluttered gently downward, still buoyed by luftgas within and destined to come to a gentle landing, but there was nothing attached to it but ropes and fragments of girder.

  Of the scout’s crew, there was no sign. Josette could only hope that they had all died in the first moments of the blast.

  She backed away from the rail, retreating until she stumbled against the companionway steps. There, she lingered a moment before saying, very softly, “Rig for landing.”

  * * *

  BERNAT COULDN’T SAY why he followed Josette up the companionway. Perhaps he just wanted to be off the deck and away from the spectacle that filled the sky behind them.

  “This ship is cursed,” the captain said as she passed Jutes.

  “If it’s a curse,” Jutes said, “I think the Vins bore the brunt of it, sir. That’s not a bad curse to have.”

  But Jutes had only seen it in glimpses. Jutes hadn’t been there. Not really. Not the way Captain Dupre had been there. Not the way Bernat had been there.

  The mood in the keel was jovial. Crewmen slapped e
ach other on the back, laughed, joked, and embraced. Even the stony face of their captain couldn’t stop the festivities. As Bernat went past the condenser, someone slapped his ass. Probably Grey, but he wasn’t sure, and he didn’t look back to check.

  Even in the sleeping berths, where the wounded had been taken, there was more cheer than Bernat could tolerate. Corne and Kiffer lay in their cots, alive and optimistic, even as the sight of their fresh stumps made Bernat want to vomit. The wounded rifleman glanced at the celebrations along the keel, clearly tempted to join in despite his perforated foot.

  Was that really all of them? Only three wounded? Somehow it felt like more. At times it had seemed that Mistral’s entire crew would be hit, with the last man obliged to drag himself to the berths.

  In Bernat’s own berth, he saw the curtain had been shredded, and splinters and sawdust were scattered across his bunk. He slid the tattered curtain aside for a better look, and found that one of his bags had a dozen holes in it. Hastily unpacking it, he found that his best fall jacket—the lovely orange cashmere that went so well with his golden brown skin—was another casualty of the battle. The poor thing had taken the brunt of a swivel-gun shot, and was beyond all hope of mending. At least it had died a hero, standing in the way of bullets meant for Mistral’s vulnerable tail girders.

  At the reservoirs, a young crewman was hunched, quietly scraping shit from the inside of his trousers. The captain took pains to not notice him, looking straight ahead at the auxiliary control area. Martel was there, standing at his station, with Lupien on the rudder wheel.

  “Not a bad butcher’s bill,” Martel said, “assuming Private Kiffer lives.”

  “Could’ve been worse,” the captain agreed. “Let’s get the revelers into a work party, and patch up the bags. And I want a full damage report before we land.”

  “Yes, sir.” Martel went forward, tipping his head and saying, “My lord,” as he passed Bernat.

  It was only then, as Captain Dupre was pulling back the curtain on her cabin, that she seemed to notice Bernat. She left the curtain open and sat down in one of her cabin’s two hammock chairs. She occupied herself with prying a musket ball out of the small table between them, indicating the open chair with a flick of her head. “Have a seat, if you’d like.”