by Robyn Bennis
Word was passed from man to man down the keel, and the ship became silent. Even the creaking of the deck suspension stopped as crewmen gripped the cables and put steady weight on them. The gun crews wrapped fire blankets around the cannon barrels, muffling the plinks as they cooled.
Bernat heard the thrum of airscrews coming from the direction of the Vin lines, behind Mistral’s tail. The sound grew louder, and was joined by a steamjack. The deck crew turned their heads as one, tracking the steamjack as it came nearer and passed to starboard.
A sudden anxiety showed on Josette’s face. As the sound of the enemy airship receded in front of them, her head scanned slowly back toward the stern. There, only now becoming audible, was the thrum of another set of airscrews. She held up two fingers to Bernat, silently mouthing the words, “Two chasseurs.”
The sound of the ship in front abruptly stopped. A few words of Vinzhalian drifted through the clouds, but Bernat couldn’t make them out.
The trailing ship continued on for a little while, coming right abeam of Mistral, so close its amorphous shadow could be seen inching through the clouds above and to starboard. There, it shut down its steamjack and went silent. Now, with airships listening off the bow and abeam, silence on deck became a matter of survival.
After an eternity of waiting, there came a hiss from the clouds ahead, and the lead ship’s steamjack spun up. Everyone listened off the stern, waiting for the other ship to restart its engine.
But it didn’t. It just hung there, so still and so silent that Bernat lost track of where its shadow lay, and could no longer find it amid all the other vague and varied patches of shadow within the clouds.
The sound of the lead ship’s steamjack had been growing fainter ahead, but now seemed steady. Josette moved to the forward rail and listened there. She suddenly whipped her head around to Kember, described a wide sweep with her hand, and mouthed, “They’re circling back.” She followed that with a series of intricate hand motions.
The ensign must have understood immediately, for she became pale and returned a questioning look. Josette only narrowed her eyes, and Kember moved quietly up the companionway. She came back a minute later, carrying a rocket nearly as tall as she was. Several crewmen went silently to her aid, moving the thing down the companionway and across the deck.
By the time Kember got it to the starboard side, the starboard gun crew already had a fire blanket draped over the rail and an impromptu launch rack made from the cannons’ worming rod. They fit the rocket into the rack. As Josette lined it up, Bernat could only recall her words above Durum: “Rockets are a sign of desperation.”
Ensign Kember brought the slow match from its tub, blew on it until the frayed end was cherry red, and touched it to the rocket’s fuse. She backed away quickly, pushing Bernat to a safe distance as she retreated.
The flame sizzled along the short fuse, inching up until it disappeared inside the rocket motor. For a moment, Bernat thought it had failed, and then it shot away in a brilliant streak of light. He only avoided flash-blindness because Josette clapped her hand over his eyes at the last second.
While crewmen stamped out embers on the deck and checked the nearest suspension cables for damage, Bernat followed Josette to the rail and leaned out to follow the rocket’s flight. He could see the light from its motor through the clouds, corkscrewing wildly as it gained altitude.
It dimmed with an audible sputter, then exploded into a brilliant, lingering white light that he recognized from university as phosphorus mirabilis. It was actually too bright at first to see the other ship by, for the light scattered through the clouds and seemed to come from every direction. As it faded, the silhouette of the ship became visible.
No, two silhouettes became visible, one on either side of the illumination, casting long, slanting shadows through the clouds below them. Bernat looked forward, to where the lead Vin ship was barely visible as a single cigar-shaped patch of darkness in the illuminated mist.
“Three ships?” he silently mouthed as he turned to Josette. But she wasn’t there. He twisted farther and saw her moving to her post.
“Emergency start on the steamjack!” she shouted. “Then give me emergency power!”
“One of them must be ours, right?” Bernat asked.
But Josette spoke as if she hadn’t heard. “Drop all forward ballast! Riggers to the stern! Elevators up full! Right hard rudder! Man your guns!”
“How can there be three?” Bernat twisted farther, all the way around, to come back to the view off the rail. The light of the rocket had faded now, leaving only the impenetrable orange blankness of the clouds.
“I want those guns ready to fire, Ensign!”
“Yes, sir!”
“But … our ships will be coming to help, right? Now that we’ve illuminated the enemy?”
The steamjack came to life in a way he’d never heard before, with a painful screech rather than its habitual whine. It shook the whole keel as it spun up, roiling and rumbling as if it might explode at any moment.
“Faster than that if you want to live,” Josette shouted up the companionway, then climbed up to shout her orders directly to the mechanics. “Cut the secondary condensers and tie down the boiler safety valves! And then climb out and disengage the starboard airscrews.”
“Perhaps one of them’s Lapwing? Or Ibis come forward to help?” Bernat was still staring into the mist and still seeing nothing. Whatever the mechanics were doing to the engine, it was causing gouts of steam to erupt from the keel and merge into the clouds in swirling, turbulent whorls and eddies.
He was about to mutter something about signaling for support from the Garnian artillery when Josette whipped her head around to face him and said, “Bernie, grab a rifle and shut up, please.”
* * *
“RUDDER’S MUSHY, SIR,” Lupien said.
“Then pull it over harder!” Josette had a hand on the girder above her, and could feel the sprangs and pops as the keel bent. If it snapped, there would be no need for the enemy to fire a shot. Mistral would go down in a broken tangle of girders and fabric.
But their survival depended on the speed of the turn. The nearest Vin chasseur, the one ahead and to starboard, was already inside canister range. The first ship to bring its guns to bear would live; the other would die in a hail of musket balls. It all came down to who turned the fastest.
The clouds darkened ahead. Josette ran to the forward rail, between the guns, and peered into the mist. The enemy chasseur’s bow loomed off the starboard quarter. It was a full compass point closer to bringing its guns into action.
“Pass the word,” Josette called back. “Every crewman get to the center of the ship, immediately. Run, damn you!” Ensign Kember turned to follow the order when Josette stopped her. “Riflemen and ensigns excepted. I need you here to shoot the bastards.”
As Kember watched the others run up the companionway, she asked, “You don’t actually expect this to help, do you?”
“The flight engineers will tell you that a ship turns faster with her weight in the middle, rather than at the ends.”
“The same flight engineers who said our original tail could hold up to any maneuver?”
Josette returned a stoic look. “Afraid you’ll feel silly on the way down?” She looked along the bottom of the envelope, out past Mistral’s bow. The enemy’s bow was distinct now, its surface bone-white against the orange mist. With ballast redistributed, Mistral did seem to be turning faster, but she couldn’t tell if it was enough. She could hear shouts in Vin from the other ship’s hurricane deck.
Bernat had his eyes closed in concentration. “The Vin captain is yelling at his rudderman,” he said. “I thought I knew all their curse words, but there are a few in there I’ve never heard.”
A grin grew on Josette’s lips. “We have them,” she said. And now she could see it plainly, as the Vin bow slid to the left in front of hers, coming so close that for a moment she thought they would scrape together. “Ready starboar
d gun! Put one through her hurricane deck.”
Whether in confusion or frustration, the Vins fired both their bref guns. The canister shot whipped harmlessly through the air ahead of Mistral, while the muzzle flash illuminated two instants of the scene on the enemy deck, showing a captain pulling desperately on a rudder wheel.
“Everyone back to their stations!” Josette ordered.
She saw Kember’s hand tighten around the starboard gun’s lanyard, and said in a calm voice, “Steady, Ensign.” Too many chasseurs had wasted too many critical shots on an enemy’s envelope, tearing open a gas bag or two, when if they’d only waited a few seconds longer, a critical spot would have come to bear. When it was life or death, there was always the urge to take action, any action, even if the moment wasn’t ripe for it. The impulse had to be swallowed down. “Patience.”
And Kember showed patience. She waited until the Vin deck was just visible ahead, the cannon lined up perfectly with it, and only then did she yank the lanyard.
The gun shot back on its slide, spitting metal and flame at so close a range that the Vin hurricane deck, already obscured by cloud, disappeared completely in the smoke. From within it came a sound like the patter of a hard rain, and the twangs that followed spoke to the damage wrought to control lines and suspension cables. “Hold fire,” Josette said, when she saw Kember go to the port gun. “Save the next shot for their steamjack. Avoid the boiler. A boiler explosion at this range would sink us too.”
When Mistral’s bow was pointed at the enemy’s first set of airscrews, Kember fired. The canister shredded them, sending shards of mahogany flying into both ships’ envelopes, while the spreading fan of musket balls flew on to pierce the enemy’s condenser and steamjack. Their turbine coughed and rattled to a grating stop, as steam poured from the gaping hole the canister had torn in the chasseur’s canvas.
Mistral shuddered as her bow struck the other ship, but it was a glancing collision, and the ships scraped past each other in the mist. As their hurricane decks passed, Josette looked over to see cables dangling limply from the deck, the steersmen stations in ruins, and the companionway riddled with holes. No living thing was visible on the other deck, but a soft, whimpering moan rose from somewhere between their bref guns.
Someone—Josette thought it was the first officer—ran boldly down the perforated companionway, and made it halfway to the deck before two red blots erupted on his chest. Bernat and another rifleman had fired simultaneously. The Vin officer fell the rest of the way, crashing down the companionway steps to lie tangled and still on the deck.
Both shooters stood stunned for a moment, their faces frozen in guilt, as if they were children caught at some mischief. The spell was only broken when the loader returned and handed them fresh rifles.
“Elevators up six degrees,” Josette said. “I don’t want to get an airscrew tangled in their wreckage.” She put a hand on Bernat’s shoulder and, after he leapt in fright, said to him, “Ask for their surrender.”
Bernat shouted the message across. Within moments, a blue flare rose from the chasseur’s tail and fell through the clouds ahead of Mistral. From this distance, Josette could hear crewmen on the surrendered ship hauling on lines to open their luftgas vents. The Vin ship began to sink moments later.
Bernat turned to Josette and asked, “How do we deal with the other two?”
Josette lowered her voice. “I have a plan. Is your Vin accent convincing enough to pull off a ruse?”
“My tutor said it was the worst he’d ever heard.”
“Damn. Well at least they won’t shoot until they’ve sorted out who just surrendered.”
As if timing themselves especially to make a fool of her, the Vin chasseur to starboard fired. Josette dropped to the deck and called, “Down!” as soon as she saw the stab of fire lighting the clouds, but it was a futile gesture, for the fury of the shot reached her ship before the word left her mouth.
The sharp, high sounds of metal smashing on metal stabbed her ears as a hail of musket balls tore through Mistral’s guts. The steamjack made a keening wail as turbine blades snapped off and were dragged by the still-spinning mechanism, scraping against the housing as they went. As the turbine came to a grinding halt, the airscrews stopped along with it, not coming to their usual gentle stop, but locking up abruptly, arrested by the shattered steamjack. Within seconds, the only sound from the engine was a long whistle broken by rumbling burps.
Josette ordered, “Keep the rudder hard over,” before she was consciously aware of the logic behind the order. The rationale fell into place in the moments that followed: the ship to starboard had Mistral in its sights and wouldn’t let go. Even if she had a working steamjack, no matter which way Mistral turned, no matter how she maneuvered, the Vin ship had to turn only a fraction as hard to track them. But Mistral might have just enough momentum left to finish her turn and point her guns back at them.
Above her, Jutes was picking himself up. He looked back along the keel and his mouth fell open. He called down the companionway in a broken voice, “Vincent is … Gears is hit bad. Someone else is dead.”
“Who?” Josette asked. She hurried halfway up the companionway ladder, stuck her head into the keel, and looked back, her eyes level with the catwalk.
“Can’t tell, sir,” Jutes said, his face white.
It wasn’t the other mechanic. That was what Josette needed to know. The mechanic’s mate, whole save for scrapes and cuts, was kneeling over Gears, who was streaming blood from holes in his belly, chest, and arm. Gears was alive for now, but just one of the musket balls in his chest and gut would have been a death sentence, let alone the three or four she could see.
The other casualty had no head or neck, and only one shoulder. Its blood was pouring through the wicker of the catwalk to rain down on the inner side of the envelope, pooling there and soaking in.
Josette’s mind continued to give orders, but she found herself paralyzed by the sight, and the words stuck in her throat. The commands piled up inside her, until she screamed within, cursing her weakness and demanding that she take charge of her own voice. But her eyes swung manically between the dead crewman and the soon-to-be dead chief mechanic. Her voice remained bottled up, while precious seconds ticked by.
Finally the pressure was too great, and it erupted from her in a rage. “Private Grey! Back to your fucking post and get my goddamn engine working!”
Grey looked confused, as if she hadn’t heard right. She stared at the strips of twisted metal that, moments earlier, had been a steamjack turbine casing. “That thing? Captain, it’s not going to run again.”
Josette had now regained control, and she spoke with a cold precision. “It is going to run, Private Grey, and you are the one who must make it run. And if the suffering of Warrant Officer Sourdeval is what stands in the way of your duty, then I will shoot him in the head myself, to get you moving.”
The chief mechanic’s wide eyes turned on her. She’d made the threat in such icy tones that no one knew whether she might actually do it—she wasn’t sure herself. Gears pushed Grey away, and nodded to her when she looked at him. “You can,” he mouthed silently, blood bubbling at the corners of his mouth.
“Everyone else will assist the mechanic’s mate in any way possible. All other repairs are pointless until the steamjack is spinning.” She pointed at the decapitated body. “And for God’s sake, someone put that over the side.”
The nearest crewman leapt to the duty without hesitation, though the victim was a comrade and likely a friend, because no one wanted a corpse aboard in the midst of battle. Apart from the distracting smell of hot blood and shit, it was too much of a reminder of what might lie in store, and so it was shoved unceremoniously through a port in the keel, along with any fleeting decency still held for the dead.
She spent another moment assessing the damage. The steamjack was perforated in two dozen places, and really might never spin again. The boiler was dented but unperforated, and so would not explode—at
least not in the next few seconds. The keel around the steamjack was a shredded mess, but it was holding together.
She returned to the deck. Mistral was slowing but still coming about. Her guns would come to bear on the enemy, but not before they got another shot off. “Anyone who is able will fire the guns when they bear,” she said, giving authority to fire at will over to whoever was the least bullet-ridden when the time came. “Gun crews may shelter behind their cannons. Riflemen take the forward rail, stay low, and fire through the gun ports.”
Bernat stepped closer, rifle in hand. “Fire at what?” he asked, motioning to the obscuring mist ahead, in which the enemy ship was only visible as a dark shadow.
“At wherever you think their gondola may be,” she said. “It may rattle them.”
“Perhaps I should fire rockets instead?”
She shot him an ironic look, but he went forward with the others. It would put more of her crew in a position of relative safety next to the gun carriages, at least, and keep their attention on the enemy ahead of them, when they might otherwise obsess over the other ship that must by now be coming in from behind. By her best estimate, the other ship would be in canister range within the next minute, and then Mistral would be raked fore and aft.
Bernat fired, and she heard his bullet plink off of the other ship’s bref gun. In response, a stab of fire shot from the center of their deck. Josette, already primed for it, dove to the deck as musket balls tore through wood and fabric above her.
She lifted her head, expecting to find the gun crews, the riflemen, and herself flayed into a bloody mess. She scanned her eyes across them from left to right, then back again.
Not a man was hurt. Ensign Kember looked back at her, bewildered.
They’d fired too early. Josette laughed and said, “We’re still in it!” She kept her eyes forward even as she yanked the pull-ropes above her, releasing emergency ballast to keep her ship in the air and the bow pointed at the enemy.
Above, she could hear the rush of luftgas escaping from burst bags. The damage was serious, but the stupid bastards had wasted their shot firing obliquely through Mistral’s envelope, when a few seconds more would have given them a shot at the hurricane deck.
