Copper knocked, a quick three raps, and then opened the door. A woman sat at a wooden desk, nothing very grand or elegant, but it looked solid and sturdy enough to last through decades and decades of rough use. This room was at the outer edge of the airship, for three portholes broke up the far wall across from the door, sunlit skies and the edges of some scattered clouds filling each circle and lighting the room brightly. Beata’s gaze drifted to the blue vista beyond the portholes, but she dragged her attention back when Copper began to speak.
“Jenra, I’ve brought one of the new lot to give you a hand,” Copper said, leading Kailin and Beata in a few steps as she spoke. “This is Beata,” she paused to nod at Beata, who nodded back respectfully, and then Copper turned to focus upon Kailin. “And this one’s assigned to you. Her name’s Kailin and she’s hosting, so you know.”
Beyond the ruddy-brown surface of the desk, the woman was looking at them with an expression of curious expectation, her eyes a lighter golden-brown than the captain’s while her skin was the same deepest black. The hair on her head was a shade more yellow than her eyes, but the color didn’t go all the way to the roots, which were as black as her skin. That amber hair was braided tight to her skull in concentric circles leading up to a thick leather wrap, from which sprang a bouquet of small braids to hang down her back. On her right cheek were a set of pale dots, similar to those on Captain Nyx’s cheek, but in a different pattern; again, Beata was curious, but really couldn’t ask.
“Kailin.” Jenra nodded to Copper, her amber-colored braids quivering with the movement, before turning her gaze upon Kailin. Her voice was low and a little husky at the edges. “I’m the quartermaster for The Kraken. I make sure we have all the things we need to function, from weapons to washboards. Are you good with numbers, Kailin?”
Kailin’s voice was reedy and soft when she answered, “I believe so, Miz.”
Jenra gave her a sharp look, and then glanced up at Copper with a querying expression.
“She had a rough time of it with the ones who took her,” Copper explained, voice on the kind side of neutral. “Doc checked her out; mostly bruises and scrapes, as well as too little food and water combined with too much sun for her type. Nothing too rough right off, if you don’t mind, Jenra.”
“Aye.” Jenra beckoned to Kailin. “Come along, girl. You may call me Jenra or Quartermaster, and tell me you’re doing poorly before falling over, please. Ask questions if you don’t understand what I give you to do, otherwise you can’t learn. Come along, I’ll start you off tallying. That’s easy enough.” She gestured for Kailin to come forward, but she didn’t touch her when the girl was in range, only waving her toward a chair beside a much smaller desk than her own, both set beneath the middle of the three portholes.
“I’ll leave you to get on,” Copper said, giving a flip of one hand in a gesture vaguely related to a salute, if one was generous. Jenra returned it with a wave before turning to gather a couple of ledgers from her desk and then place them on the smaller desk where Kailin sat.
“Come along, little Bee,” Copper said cheerily as she led Beata out again. “Last stop’s yours.”
Although Beata wanted to ask many, many questions, she was still uncertain, still half expecting the appearances of benevolence, even kindness, to be revealed as an act or just a surface hiding something ugly beneath. She had been violently stolen from her life, didn’t know if her mumma was alive—deep down she feared the worst—and had no idea if her papa knew what had happened yet. Their trip was to have taken a full moon and a fortnight, and they’d scarcely left the mid-point port town when their transport ship had been attacked by the sky pirates aboard The Lamprey. It all seemed unreal, like a nightmare she might wake from any time. A sensation perhaps aided by the strange blur of the sleep poison she’d been given. She didn’t have a single memory of anything that had happened from the moment she was knocked unconscious until she woke on The Kraken, and even that one memory of waking in a cage feeling desperately thirst was a blur, let alone the brief but terrifying experience in their cabin on the transport ship, which had also been rendered more than a little unreal by the unnatural sleep that came after.
“Hoi, what’s this?” Copper chided, startling Beata out of her downward spiraling thoughts. They were standing at the bottom of one of the steps leading up to the deck, though Beata had barely noticed their progress. Copper’s thumb swiped under Beata’s eyes, one and then the other, and she was frowning, though it seemed more concern than consternation. “Are you feeling sick?”
Beata shook her head, swallowing thickly and tugging the neckline of her too-large tunic up to mop the last of the moisture from her cheeks. “I...keep thinking of my mumma...and my papa, if...” Trailing off, she shook her head again. She’d just start crying again if she tried to say the words.
“You can’t know,” Copper said quietly, tilting her head, several of her braids cascading over her shoulder to swing loose along the side of her face. “I know it’s hard, but there’s nothing to be done, little Bee. We didn’t take you, we just bought you from those who did, and Captain Nyx isn’t taking anyone back, even if we could figure out where everyone’s from. We’re not running a charity.”
Nodding, Beata knew this; the captain and Copper had both made it clear they were not rescuing anyone, not taking anyone home. “I’ll have to find them once I’m free.” Taking a big, uneven breath, she blinked rapidly to fight more tears. “I know things could be worse, but...but I won’t forget them.”
Sighing, Copper put a gentle hand to Beata’s shoulder. “No one expects you to, Bee. Just...trust me... It’s easier if you don’t think about it too much. Easier on you, on your heart.” Looking around them briefly, she lowered her voice to just above a whisper. “Think of this as being sent off to school like the rich folk do with their young; a tough boarding school with hard lessons and rough conditions. And in a year or two—if you work hard and mind yourself—you’ll...graduate. So to speak. Then you can make your way home and see what’s what.”
Beata looked up at Copper, only a head taller than Beata and maybe a decade older, but clearly much more worldly-wise. She’d been the kindest of anyone Beata had yet met aboard The Kraken. It was clear that she meant well and didn’t want Beata to suffer any more than could be helped. Beata could see it plainly in her face and the way she stood, hear it in her tone, feel it in the hand curved over Beata’s shoulder. “I’ll try, Copper,” she said a little nasally, sniffling as quietly as she could manage.
“That’s good, little bee—try your hardest and do your best.” Copper shook her shoulder a little, smiling encouragingly. “Now, come along.”
Beata followed Copper up and onto the deck, finding a strange solace in looking across the deck and up, the blue going on and on, the wind buffeting her about just short of too roughly, and the distant clouds stretched out across the sky intermittently, as if the wind had smeared them across the bright blue expanse. This time she caught herself and remembered to shake herself free of her daze and follow Copper before the woman noticed she’d fallen a few steps behind.
Men and women moved about here and there in the performance of their duties, dressed in variations on shirt/tunic, trousers/leggings, belts with gear or weapons—sometimes both—and a variety of choices for their feet; Beata witnessed every choice from bare to boots, with a few sandals and a few split-toed soft shoes like Copper wore. It made sense to her the moment she saw one of them climb up the rigging from the deck and into the sails or the network of ropes surrounding the great ovoid bag full of lighter-than-air gas. They grasped the ropes between that split in the soft shoes, holding on with their toes if barefooted, but Beata had felt such thick ropes before and knew they were very rough. She imagined clambering about on those ropes would chafe one’s feet raw after a while—or possibly make them tough as leather, eventually. Some of the crew moving about on deck wore cloths tied about their heads, those with longer hair seemed most often to braid it, many wearing r
ows of braids close against their skulls, some in patterns from zigzags to spirals.
Beata couldn’t feel very guilty for looking at all there was to see, and when Copper caught her upper arm and guided her along at a better pace, the woman was chuckling softly as they went. There had not been so many people about when they’d gone up to the captain’s cabin, and Beata wondered if they’d been keeping clear of the deck to avoid spooking the new captives... Perhaps they might even be termed “cargo”. Beata still couldn’t like the term “slave”, no matter how true it might be. Again, she pushed those thoughts away; it served nothing for her to cry and cry, either from grief or anger, and she had promised to try, so... Well, she would try.
Copper continued along the deck toward the stern of the airship, answering a few hails here and there with a word or two, sometimes a wave, but no one stopped her or tried to have a conversation. It didn’t surprise Beata that Copper would be popular with the crew, and she counted herself lucky to be in her care. She only hoped whoever she would be working for might be as kind, or at least not cruel.
The rumbling, rhythmic thump of the engines vibrated through the deck as well as the air, growing louder as Beata followed Copper up across the quarterdeck and onward toward what Beata recalled being the poopdeck. There, at the aftmost center of the poopdeck, was the huge housing for the upper portions of the great mechanism that drove the airship by way of two enormous rotating propellers. She stopped for a moment to watch the blades swooshing through the air, the wind now noticeably blowing toward them.
Beata felt a swoop of awe and amazement, never having been so close to an airship’s propellers—any ship’s propellers, for that matter—and even though she understood how they worked, thanks to her papa, it was still a little wondrous to see the true scale of them. A tug on her arm, had her feet moving again, and her eyes grew wide as she realized they were moving toward the sound of the engines, not away.
To either side of the housing, Beata saw open hatches in the deck, each held by a hook through a ring in the hatch, the hooks at the end of chains attached to a heavy plate affixed to the deck. As she followed Copper to the right-hand hatch—or starboard, Beata reminded herself—she saw a heavy latch affixed to the inside of the metal-reinforced frame.
Either noticing the direction of Beata’s gaze or just guessing she’d be curious, Copper started down the ladder inside, saying, “In case of an attack, one of the first things an enemy will want to do is keep us from getting away.” She patted one of the two metal catches on the undersides of the hatch’s frame before she was too far down to reach. “So we’ve got to be able to seal the easiest access to The Kraken’s engines good and sturdy.”
“Yes,” Beata agreed. “Looks mighty sturdy.”
Copper stood away from the end of the ladder, still within the rough square of light from above, but beyond her were fixed lights overhead, their blue-white glow not as bright as the sun, but plenty enough to see by. She gestured at the lights, round white domes affixed to metal plates with cables running out either end to the next light or through a hole in the ceiling or wall. “When the engines are running, we’ve plenty enough energy to have these lights powered the whole time. A lot easier than sending someone to wind up the piezo-lanterns every other shift.”
“Why not have them throughout the ship?” Beata asked as Copper continued down a fairly narrow companionway, both of them speaking loudly due to being surrounded by the rumbling throb of the engines, obviously nearby and growing nearer as they went.
“The wiring is...” Copper made a finger-wriggling gesture high enough for Beata to see it over her shoulder, “complicated. It would have to either be run along all the decks we wanted to light or we’d have to cut holes to run it through between the decks and have the fixtures on the walls or ceilings—like in here—and the project would be an unholy fuss to accomplish.”
Beata thought about it as they took a turn, then another, and went down another ladder. “I think I see what you mean.” Copper nodded to show she’d heard, and pushed open a metal door in a metal-bound frame, another solidly made latch on the inside of this door.
The moment she opened the door, however, the sound increased three or four times in volume, and the vibrations were far more noticeable in the deck beneath Beata’s feet, as well as in the very air. Air full of the smells of hot metal, grease, and ozone. In the large area opening out from the door they’d just entered, Beata had trouble comprehending all that was there to be seen.
Machinery, devices, parts, tools, crewmembers doing assorted things to or with them, all with an obvious sense of purpose; nothing frantic or even urgent, just steady movement and activity, people doing their tasks. At the center were the main engines for The Kraken’s propulsion system, two huge piezo-cascade engines, and at the base of each were a dynamo and a magnetic generator, as well as a crank starter.
Beata recalled diagrams her papa had shown her, of interconnected devices meant to provide the gradual steps of ramping power up to kick off the initial kinetic motion the larger piezo-electric engines required to start; things she hadn’t fully grasped in every particular, but which she’d been fascinated by. Once the piezo-cascade engines were moving, their own power kept them going. Spiraling interconnected sets of piezo crystals rotated against specifically shaped ceramic plates, creating bursts of electricity which continued the movement of the engine, and while the excess energy was harnessed, the movement of the engine concurrently turned the propellers of the airship via gears and linkages. All of it thrummed and rumbled along continuously, the regular thumping of the parts coming together and being shoved apart again, providing power and further motion for The Kraken’s various needs.
On one wall was a bank of what she recognized to be large batteries, wires linking them into a bundle of cables running along the wall above them, the bundle cradled in large brackets. At either end of the row of batteries were two strange contraptions, each with gears and wheels inside a thick oval band. Beata tilted her head, trying to figure it out, but feeling as if she ought to know what they were.
Copper chuckled softly. “Kinetic chargers,” she said, taking Beata closer. “Someone walks on the track there and it turns the gears, which align with a series of others that connect to cylinders behind the wall here. They create energy as they spin inside specially treated housings and that energy goes into the batteries. If we have engine trouble, or need more power for some reason, the batteries are standing by to be used. However, afterward—”
Beata nodded, finishing the sentence. “They have to be recharged.” Copper nodded with a small approving smile and Beata looked around interestedly. “This all reminds me of places my papa took me, designs he showed me, and some of the stories he told.” She pointed across the room, past a couple of crewmembers who were sitting at a workbench with an array of tools at their elbows, working on building or repairing parts or devices Beata couldn’t see clearly enough to try to identify. “His workshop is much like that. All sorts of tools and parts surrounding the workbench, things half-built, half-repaired...” Shaking her head, she couldn’t quite decide whether to cry or smile. Papa’s workshop was hidden by dustsheets and the corners full of cobwebs, since he hadn’t been back for more than a week at a time in months and months.
“You should feel right at home, then.” Copper looked amused. “Your father worked with machinery?”
“He’s a master engineer,” Beata replied proudly, trying to keep that pride and ignore the homesickness and the other feelings that kept trying to drag her down into sad and frightened tears. Clearing her throat, she added, “We were going to see him when... When I was taken.”
Copper’s brows furrowed as Beata’s throat tried to close up on her, her chest growing tight. Before either could speak more on that topic just then, a man’s voice rang out from an approaching figure.
“Well, well, what have you brought me, Copper?”
“Maintenance Chief Oskar,” Copper said clearly, her thin
lips pulling into an answering smile. “I have brought you one of our new acquisitions. This is Beata, who’s hosting, so you’ll mind the necessities on that front, but she’s to help you however you need.”
“Veteen told me we’d likely be getting one of them,” Oskar said, his voice easily heard over all the noise, though he hardly seemed to be working at it. “Beata, is it?”
“Yes, uh... Chief Oskar,” Beata said, mind almost blanking for a second before she remembered the name she’d only just heard. This would be good in some ways, but she was beginning to worry it would be painful in others.
“We didn’t know when we made up the roster, but it so happens her father’s an engineer,” Copper shared, resting a hand on Beata’s shoulder and squeezing lightly. “So she’s familiar with some things already.”
“Well, good!” Oskar laughed in obvious approval. “Serendipity strikes when you least expect it.”
“True,” Copper agreed before turning Beata to face her, that one hand still on her shoulder. “Oskar will release you at the end of the shift. You’ll go straight to your cabin from here, and then the galley. If you get lost, ask, but no wandering, little bee.”
“Yes’m,” Beata said. “It’s the strict schooling today.”
Phantasmical Contraptions & Other Errors Page 21
