The gun captain, Booth, attempted to pull a two foot piece of wood from his left shoulder, a splinter that had taken him. With luck, Dr. Sawyer would see to Booth, and he would live.
“Those wounded to Dr. Sawyer as quick as you can.” Wilkins ordered two men. The enemy shot had destroyed one gun crew and part of the next, though on the port side of the ship.
Losses. Men he had known by name, now wounded, some dead. It did not look like any man had been thrown over the ship. In the RDC, the cry of ‘man overboard’ conveyed a far worse image than it did in the senior service.
Gay called to him, “Captain Micawber, we approach. Sir, we need time to set up the port battery again.”
Wilkins looked at the spatial relationships. “I can give you a few seconds; that is all, Mr. Gay. Then you will have to shoot with what you have.”
“Aye, sir. Aye. Copperfield, to gun three with your men. Get that gun up and pointed at forty-five degrees, do you hear me! Jump to it, you men.”
Wilkins turned his mind to buying more time. “Hard to port and down planes ten degrees.” He started counting. If he had time, he would have worked the math. Instead, he went by feel. He counted and eyeballed the distances.
Then, “Hard to starboard. Up planes twelve degrees, cut the starboard propeller.” He raised his voice and shouted towards the waist of the ship. “Mr. Gay, we begin our attack run!”
“Aye, sir. Fire as you bear. Aim at the forward hull!”
And instead of a volley, one after the other of the Golden Mary’s guns rang out. Eleven shots sounded, and so Wilkins knew that Copperfield had gotten the damaged gun back into service.
He turned his eyes to the enemy, and helped Bunsby with the helmsman, as they guided the ship below and behind the enemy. A blind spot from which the Frederick’s guns could not attack.
The enemy faced some problems. Several of the shots—Bates said eight hits—damaged the hull above them. And there, as he had hoped, a trickle of coal began to stream. “Let’s rise behind them, Mr. Bunsby, and then turn to a heading for Beaufort West again. We shall see if they follow us. Mr. Bates, Mr. Dawkins, have the men see to repairs. Mr. Gay, we are still at quarters.”
But over the next few moments, the tactic of crossing under the Frederick and then falling behind and below had worked. The enemy did not pursue when they broke to port. The battle—and the Germans—were finished.
Wilkins wiped the sweat from his brow. The Germans may not have been destroyed, but they had been defeated. He watched them steam slowly away. He could not see the vented steam from their balloons, but the slowing of the Frederick clearly illustrated the effect. They would need days to limp back to the Bantu lands that they tried to seize suzerainty over.
He waited a few more minutes until he was sure.
“Mr. Gay, you may stand down the men. Gentlemen, I think such a victory, and we have had one, means a double ration for the crew and for us; you must all join me in my cabins. I believe some of my grandfather’s famous punch is called for once again.”
Punch would make everything right.
Author Note:
I first encountered Mr. Micawber as portrayed by WC Fields. A charming interpretation. Since then, I discovered that his first name was Wilkins. Courtesy of an immigration officer, my last is Wilkin, no S. Then when this story came to mind, I discovered that the second most beloved comic figure in English literature is Wilkins Micawber, just behind Falstaff.
A story with a Steampunk flavor followed. It is thought that Micawber is modeled after Dickens’ own father, and that the original David Copperfield was born about 1820; so, here, in 1879, the grandsons of both men meeting up and serving the Empire seemed logical.
Styled after David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
Heat from the boilers made the sweat on Pia Hansen’s skin evaporate almost as soon as it left the ten-year-old girl’s pores. She moved quickly in the room. Prolonged exposure to the inhuman temperatures guaranteed a gruesome death—something even a child knew. With the tasks done, she raced from the room, only daring to breathe after the massive metal doors clanged shut. Her act guaranteed the city two more hours of power.
Pia wiped the grime from her hands on her dirty work clothes and picked up her clipboard. With the hard part of her duties finished, she turned her attention to an equally important job. The duty should never have gone to a child; laws prevented it. But on this night—New Year’s Eve—the law bent to the will of Lars Rasmussen.
New Year’s Eve—the one night of the year when the government looked the other way and allowed its subjects to escape the captivity of their homes past midnight. Soldiers and civilians alike spent months in preparation for their only chance to break curfew and experience a brief period of celebration and unabashed revelry.
New Year’s Eve—the one night the intense heat churning the bowels of the power plant barely satisfied the city’s need for energy, and no one knew more about harnessing the beneficial properties of fire than the Rasmussens.
To hear Lars tell it, he began working with steam technology before he could walk. His family carried the knowledge in their blood. The first Czar appointed his great-great-grandfather, the city’s first hydronic engineer, a century earlier. From that day, Rasmussens ran the power. Systems had evolved much since the first crude machines powered only mills and basic modes of propulsion. Now, the very existence of humanity itself owed everything to the proper balance of heat and water.
For eons, the gods jealously protected this knowledge, but the Rasmussen family forever deprived Deity of its greatest gift when Lars Rasmussen invented the great equalizer; he invented the Kalt Afdeling System.
No one knew exactly how Lars came up with the Kalt Afdeling System. Some said it came to him in a dream, yet others thought the man sold his soul to the devil himself in order to unlock the almost unlimited power the new system provided. Somehow, the idea came to him, and he realized that heat alone could not produce the kinds of power the growing populace needed. Heat worked fine for singular functions, but could one heat source run an entire city? No, it could not. For his society to survive, the city demanded more power, more energy.
Lars found the solution to the centuries-old problem, invented the system, and by so doing, forever changed the face of history, cementing his name as one of the great inventors of all mankind.
He ran the city’s power concern as its own kingdom, with himself as sovereign. A dictator in his private realm, Lars treated his employees much worse than the inhuman equipment that served the city. Those close to him knew never to cross him, for only his memory surpassed his evil nature. Netta Hansen never had a chance.
Netta’s husband never met their daughter. The soldier died while in the military. Without income, the pretty mother applied for various jobs, finally securing employment with the Rasmussen Power Company. The still-youthful woman toiled in the plant, earning barely enough to cover food and shelter costs for her struggling family. She would return home after many long hours, exhausted, but the sight of her daughter’s beautiful face washed away the memories of the plant. As long as they had each other, they were happy.
But those days lived only in the past, a past forever changed. Now Pia worked for Lars Rasmussen, a tyrant who forced her to risk death every time she entered the boiler room, a place so hot it only compared to the very caverns of Hell in intensity.
Only two more shifts tonight, Pia thought, as she gathered her clipboard and walked from the torturous room. She could still feel the searing heat emanating from the door as she walked down the hall, finally stopping at a small metal panel near the floor. She knelt and turned a latch; the panel swung wide. She crouched, crawled into the space.
Once inside, Pia turned to a bank of twelve switches on a far wall, one switch for each one of the enormous boilers in the plant. Looking at the numbers on her clipboard, she clicked each switch to match the number she recorded while inside the inferno. She hurried the task and scampered from the room, closi
ng the panel door as quickly as possible. She stood alone in the hall, a solitary figure in the massive power plant. Her face awash with anguish, thoughts of her mother came to her mind as she walked to her living quarters.
Years had passed since the days when Netta walked those same halls. Everything changed the day Lars Rasmussen met Netta Hansen. When she stepped outside during a rare break, he was immediately smitten. That very day, he hired her as his personal assistant.
The Spartan life Netta and Pia had shared disappeared forever. For the first time in her life, Netta could afford to buy her daughter more than the necessities. The humble family enjoyed the fruits of her many hours of labor.
With her new income, the two moved from their meager existence into a nice house, one where snow didn’t blow in from ill-fitted windows, and where the vermin remained outside. Pia came to know the feeling of a full stomach and a warm night’s sleep. Netta watched with grateful eyes as her daughter at first began to smile, and then laugh. Finally, Netta felt worthy of true happiness. The feeling did not last, due in part to Lars’s machine.
Lars invented a machine so advanced it replaced the human labor force at the plant. He called his machine the Kalt Afdeling System, and no one knew how it worked. He even barred anyone from seeing the revolutionary device. Many believed the claims of his invention impossible—a self-sustaining power plant. They called him a fool, they called him crazy, but the insults died the day everyone walked out of the plant, and the power remained on.
Netta felt the pain of watching scores of friends leave the plant, their livelihood removed. She remained one of the few employees left at the company. After the successful launch of the Kalt Afdeling System, Lars turned his attention to Netta—attention she neither requested nor desired.
As Netta continued working for Lars, Pia noticed changes in her mother. Netta stopped laughing, and then, she stopped smiling. She nearly collapsed at the end of each shift, but not from physical labor, like when she worked long hours at the plant. Then one night, Netta never came home.
Pia Hansen never knew what happened to her mother. She left for work in the morning and disappeared. Police opened an investigation, questioning everyone who last saw the woman. They directed many questions toward Lars, her employer and one of the last people to see her alive. The police found nothing. With no leads, the investigation turned stone cold, and eventually closed.
As unanswered questions mounted, Lars acted. He announced that he would adopt Pia and raise her as his own daughter. The little girl moved into the Rasmussen mansion.
Without her mother, no temporal possession could restore the loss in Pia’s life, and the girl grew despondent. She also found that the person she thought Lars to be never existed. The man who spoke so kindly with others changed into a vindictive bully. Three weeks after moving into Lars’s home, he told her of his decision to move her from the mansion.
“Where will I live?” Pia asked.
“You’re going to work for me,” Lars replied.
“In the mansion?”
“No. You’ll be working in my power plant.”
“Doing what?” she asked.
“Work,” he told the frightened and confused child. That day, Lars himself drove her to the gates of the power plant. After informing her of her new responsibilities, he left her alone, with only her memories for companions.
Always the resourceful child, Pia found living by herself a much better situation than the time she spent living with Lars. In the vast expanse of the factory, no one yelled, no one threatened, and no one hit—living without love the price she paid for those meager comforts. Lars needed someone inside, someone to do this important job. In her, he found the perfect candidate—perfect, because she had no other options.
Pia turned her attention to her duties and the long night that awaited her. Normally, the law required the boilers power down after eight o’clock, but tonight, the people’s need for energy required the plant operate well into the night. That meant two extra shifts for her; one at ten o’clock, and another at midnight. After that, she could finally take a well-deserved break and sleep. She checked her timepiece; it showed 7:50 p.m., ten minutes until her next shift.
Shadows from endless pipes, walls, and wires cast eerie patterns on the dark hallway leading to the heart of the building. Pia approached the room slowly. She could feel the heat, even through the thick metal doors that stood between her and the inferno beyond.
As she walked, the sweat already forming on her small hands made it difficult to hold the clipboard and pencil she needed to do her job. She stood on her tippy toes and hit the button releasing the door. It crawled open and, as she had done hundreds of times before, she entered the room.
She worked as fast as she could, recording the information from each of the twelve boilers, then recorded the numbers into the crawl space. Only two more shifts, and she could finally stop for the night.
Pia took longer than normal to return to her room. The one-time private living quarters for the plant’s security guard contained a bed, bathroom, and a small eating area. The girl slowly climbed the large steel staircase to the room surrounded by windows. These gave the plant’s only occupant an unparalleled view of the vast conglomeration of piping and vents, hallways and secret passages. Lars Rasmussen might have owned the property, but Pia oversaw it all.
Her bare feet ached as calloused flesh touched the cold metal of each step. The day she came to the plant she had shoes—good shoes—but she long ago outgrew them.
Once in her room, Pia lay on the thin mattress of her bed and closed her eyes. As her tiny body tried to recover from the torment inflicted upon it, her mind began to swim in a sea of unconsciousness.
Her breathing slowed and her mind filled with dreams. She saw an entity made entirely of heat, not only physical, but also spiritual in nature. This mysterious being pursued her, and she tried to get away. Pia’s legs began to thrash on the bed as she tried outrunning the horror that progressively gained on her.
She ran endlessly through the plant. The chase ended when Pia saw an area she did not know, a place where she had never been. When she turned back, she expected the monster to consume her. Instead, she saw nothing, no phantom, no threat. Something more deadly, yet welcoming, replaced the dread. The thought jolted her body awake, and she quickly sat up in her bed.
The calmness of the dream replaced her sense of fear. Pia cursed herself for falling asleep, something she could not afford to do between shifts. She’d done it before, and the repercussions were swift and severe. She quickly checked her timepiece and exhaled in relief. She still had time to make the ten o’clock round, but she must hurry.
Pia flew down the stairs. With clipboard and pencil in hand, she reached the boiler room with only a few minutes to spare. She stepped on her toes, hit the button, and entered after the door rolled open.
The blast of heat overwhelmed her. She thought it could not possibly get any hotter inside, but she thought wrong. It wasn’t until the large metal door clanged shut as she left, her readings taken, and she wiped the sweat off her face, that she realized the increased heat burned her exposed feet.
Only then did she feel the searing pain. The floor inside the furnace room reached temperatures hot enough to burn. She sat on the floor of the hallway and tried massaging the pain away. After adjusting the switches, she sat and wondered how in the world she would be able to check the wicked engines one more time.
The red glow from the boilers cast a long shadow of the sad girl on the hard concrete floor. Pia imagined those outside the high plant walls, the children and their parents, and what they planned on doing for their one night of extended freedom, the one night everyone could stay up and welcome in the New Year. She struggled to control her emotions. Ultimately, fatigue and exhaustion overcame her, and memories of better days, happier days, with her mother came flooding back, as if a dam had burst.
For years, she, too, celebrated the New Year’s arrival, when soldiers put dow
n the weapons of death and honored life. She remembered the parties, the delicious food, the joy of laughter, much of it her own. And the fireworks—oh, the fireworks—that filled the sky with millions of points of brightly colored light. She loved the fireworks most of all.
The thought of parties and laughter and fireworks for everyone else but her caused her to sink deeper inside her cocoon of inner anguish. She wished New Year’s would not come, or if it did, she wished she could just disappear before it arrived.
Dejected, Pia finally stood and began meandering around the empty plant, not returning to her lonely room atop the stairs. Each step proved a painful one, but she felt a greater pain inside her heart. She kept walking.
She wandered the empty halls, passing places she visited hundreds of times. She continued until coming to a part of the building foreign to her. Looking up, she read the words: KALT AFDELING.
Pia knew as much about the workings of the plant as any normal ten-year-old child. She understood the boilers somehow made it possible for everyone in the city to have power, power to do the things they needed to do. However, her mind could not comprehend Lars’ system, other than it made possible a ten-fold increase in power from the existing engines. She did know she stood just outside the room housing Lars’s greatest contribution to humanity.
Pia looked at the sign that loomed overhead, and a chill spread through her body. That part of the plant felt strange, foreign, unknown. Pia glanced about her furtively, as if someone lurked in the shadows, watching her. She felt as if a presence would run at her, screaming at her for her obvious disobedience. The silence echoing throughout the building only added to Pia’s trepidation.
She waited, but no one came. Pia checked her timepiece. She had one hour until the next shift, until she again faced the tormenting heat.
Instead of leaving as she knew she should, Pia remained and studied what she saw. She noticed a wall with no indication of an entrance. The hallway simply ended, and where a door should be, nothing. She read the words of caution on the sign and said the words out loud. “Kalt Afdeling.”
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