Jack Cloudie j-5

by Stephen Hunt

  ‘Kiss my condensers, but this wreckage is all wrong, Jack softbody,’ said Coss.

  ‘Too right it is,’ said Jack. ‘These are all our people. If we’d made the rendezvous any quicker, this would have been you and me lying here as vulture fodder. How are we even going to bury so many?’

  ‘You misunderstand,’ said the steamman. ‘I mean this wreckage is too small.’

  ‘You’ve got a good set of vision plates in your skull, old steamer,’ said Oldcastle. He had abandoned the search and was sitting on a piece of hull, shading his eyes from the high sun and gazing up at the reassuring armoured bulk of the Iron Partridge floating overhead. ‘You saw how much was left of our prize vessel after we burnt her down to her bones. And we did that with charges laid on the inside. This-’ he waved a hand across the sands ‘-wasn’t a normal battle. It was a slaughter.’

  ‘Something new,’ said Coss.

  ‘Aye,’ said Oldcastle. ‘Something new in the very old game we’ve been playing against the caliph these last few centuries. Something new come along to disturb an old man’s rest, curse my unlucky stars.’

  Jack turned away from the sight of the sailors’ mutilated corpses in disgust. ‘Their faces …’

  ‘A tradition of the caliph’s army, lad,’ said Oldcastle. ‘They present their officers with sacks of ears and noses severed from the bodies of the fallen to prove the scale of their victory. It leaves little room for exaggeration of your triumph. It’s a wicked hard thing to be an infidel in this land.’

  ‘Yes, a hard thing.’

  Was it just the dead and fallen, or were prisoners and wounded fair game too, Jack wondered? Alan, Saul, you’ve never seemed so far away. How he wished he was back with his brothers now — it didn’t even matter that he had failed to raise the money he needed to rescue them from poverty — even the grime and relentless destitution of a state poorhouse was better than picking through the terrible litter of this battlefield.

  A call sounded out from over the rise of the next dune and one of their Benzari marines appeared waving a rifle to indicate he had found something of note. Wading through the fine orange sand alongside the master cardsharp and Coss, Jack saw that the marines were pulling what looked like a white blanket off a man-sized canister jutting out of the sands. Captain of Marines Tempest was running down towards his men and cursing them for fools. Something glinted below the white sheeting, two glass hemispheres filled with liquid, separated by a thin membrane.

  ‘You perishing idiots,’ yelled the marine office. ‘There’s enough explosives sloshing around in there to blow you back to your barbarian mountains.’

  Jack took in the find as he warily approached, the captain of marines shoving his men back. The object they had discovered looked like one of the shells the Iron Partridge’s gunners loaded into the breeches of their cannons, but a hundred times larger. And the material they had pulled off it resembled white silk, connected to the canister by guide lines, an oversized version of the sail rider chutes sailors would use in a last-ditch attempt to abandon a wrecked airship.

  ‘This canister was floating in the air,’ said Jack, pointing at the silk-like material. Dear Circle, this thing was designed to fly!

  The master cardsharp pushed Jack’s hand back down. ‘Careful about it, Mister Keats.’ He pointed to a crown of metal spikes circling the canister’s rim. ‘Those are contact detonators. The ones on its side lying against the sand have been sheared off by a shockwave, which is the only reason this wicked contraption didn’t blast itself and half an acre of desert away when it hit the ground.’

  ‘It’s a mine,’ said Jack. ‘An aerial mine!’

  ‘The racks we found in the prize vessel’s bomb bays …’ said Coss.

  ‘Too big for standard fin-bombs,’ said Jack, ‘just the right size to mount these.’

  ‘Just waiting to be loaded for war,’ said the master cardsharp. ‘Hindsight makes wise men of many a blessed fool.’

  ‘You could only release such a weapon into the air if you were following the wind down onto an enemy squadron,’ said Coss.

  The master cardsharp took the tool chest out of Coss’s hands and stepped towards the mine, waving away the captain of marine’s protests as he used a screwdriver to lever off a metal plate above the transparent explosive chamber, revealing a throbbing layer of yellow-furred flesh beneath. ‘A fair wind, Mister Shaftcrank, and the foul touch of their womb mages to guide its sails. Those great big flying lizards that their scouts ride can follow the scent of carper to track down an airship and I’ll wager these wicked things can do much the same.’

  ‘Those bleeding little Cassarabian sand monkeys,’ growled the captain of marines. ‘I’d like to get my fingers around the necks of the ones that did this to our boys.’

  ‘Here’s mortal progress for you,’ said John Oldcastle. ‘Our ships are racked with fin-bombs to see off their nomads and bandits, while theirs are racked with ship-killers like these. Get the master bombardier down here, Mister Keats. We’ll drain out the charge of this beastie and then load her onto the boat.’

  ‘How can we possibly defend against something like this?’ Jack asked.

  Oldcastle pointed up to the Iron Partridge. ‘The answer’s blowing in the wind, Mister Keats. An iron skin to cover our carper guts. This spiny floating chandelier of the caliph’s is all blast — fine for ripping apart a soft-skinned vessel, but you need to shape an explosive charge if you’re to pierce armour plate properly. Still, I wouldn’t want to risk a cloud of these mines — they could blow off our engines cars and woe betide the skymen with their faces pressed against a porthole when one went off.’

  Jack nodded in understanding. Their oddity of a vessel was so different from the rest of the fleet, it was the one thing that the Cassarabians hadn’t planned for when designing their weapons.

  Omar’s heart stopped as the monstrous seven-foot-high beyrog sprinted towards the orange tree he was hiding in, ready with the blade of his scimitar to slash down when the creature came clawing up towards the foliage. But it never leapt, crashing instead into the bush beneath Omar’s feet and emerging a second later clutching a small slave boy, a belt around his waist hung with gardening tools.

  ‘Everyone was ordered out of the gardens tonight,’ said the grand vizier.

  ‘I arrived late for my duty after supper, your eminence,’ pleaded the boy dangling from the beyrog’s grasp. ‘I never spoke to the master of the gardens, I didn’t know …’

  ‘What did you see here tonight?’ demanded Zahharl. ‘What did you hear?’

  ‘Nothing, your eminence. I saw nothing.’

  ‘A wise young slave, who sees no evil and hears no evil.’ The grand vizier turned to the caliph. ‘You know what to do.’

  ‘He is just a child,’ said the caliph.

  ‘You too must prove yourself to me this night.’

  ‘I cannot,’ begged the caliph, trying not to look at the struggling slave’s face.

  ‘Then have your beyrog do it.’

  ‘That would be the same as if I had done it myself.’

  ‘You are right,’ sighed the grand vizier. He grabbed the slave by his rough gardener’s robes, lifting him out of the hulking beyrog’s grasp. ‘And if you must do these things, they are better done by your own hand. Then you know they shall be done properly and efficiently.’ He took the boy’s head and thrust it down into an irrigation channel next to the path. ‘Hear no evil, see no evil, and now, speak no evil ever again.’

  Omar watched in disgust as the boy’s legs spasmed and jerked while the grand vizier drowned him. The murder done, the grand vizier stood up and pointed past the foliage of the orange tree where Omar was hiding. ‘The poor lad. He must have slipped from the terrace up there and landed unconscious in the water where he drowned. A good thing he is of no account to anyone.’ Zahharl indicated the beyrog, standing dispassionately on the other side of the path. ‘Order your hound away.’

  The caliph did so and Zahharl marched behind t
he beyrog, shutting the garden’s doors behind the bodyguard and the other sentries standing outside. As he returned towards the caliph, the grand vizier’s right leg lashed out and caught the empire’s leader in the gut, doubling him up.

  ‘I asked for one simple thing to prove your loyalty and you failed me.’

  ‘Please, don’t,’ coughed the Caliph Eternal as the grand vizier’s leg lashed out again, catching him between the thighs and sending him sprawling across the slave’s corpse.

  ‘You are too weak,’ said the grand vizier, advancing on the figure whimpering against the tiles of the hanging garden. ‘And if you want to see progress done, you must be strong, as strong as our brave new age demands. You want a strong empire, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ begged the caliph, raising his arms up to ward off any more lashes from the grand vizier’s boot.

  ‘That is good,’ said Zahharl. ‘For that is what I want also.’ He removed his boots and sat down on the slab where Shadisa had been tied down, soaking his feet in the water channel at the slab’s base before pushing his soles out towards the caliph. ‘Rub my feet for me, and then dry them on your clothes. Show me how much you love me. Then I shall reward you.’

  Omar watched in silent horror as the empire’s ruler of rulers prostrated himself before Immed Zahharl, massaging the killer’s feet before rubbing them dry with the silk of his own robe. The Caliph Eternal could cry out in a second, call in his bodyguard of beyrogs outside and have them rip the limbs off this sly, devious murderer, one by one. Yet here he was, supposedly the most powerful man in the empire, bowing down before the grand vizier as if he was no more than a slave from one of the capital’s many bathhouses. What sort of devil is this grand vizier, that he can turn Shadisa against me and treat the Caliph Eternal like a hound to be whipped on his whim?

  ‘Kiss them now and I shall give it to you,’ said the grand vizier, and as the Caliph Eternal moaned and pressed his lips against the feet of his advisor, the grand vizier brought out a syringe filled with a blood-red liquid. ‘Stay still,’ commanded the grand vizier. He leant forward and shoved the needle into the base of the caliph’s neck, pushing the plunger down and releasing the substance into the ruler’s body as he lay down moaning. ‘Aren’t you glad I’m here for you,’ cooed the grand vizier. ‘Someone to look after you and protect you.’

  ‘Yes,’ wailed the Caliph Eternal. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, then,’ said Zahharl, tossing the empty syringe into a bush, ‘get to your feet now. We have a war to prosecute and the Imperial Aerial Squadron will bring you victory after victory. In the end, even you may begin to tire of accepting the triumphs that are to come.’

  Once the caliph and the grand vizier had departed the hanging garden, Omar dropped to the ground beside the forgotten corpse of the gardener. He lifted the dead boy out of the channel and rolled him onto the path leaving him with as much dignity as he could.

  ‘I’ll send the ones that did this to paradise after you,’ whispered Omar. ‘You are of account to me, and that is my promise to you.’

  Omar walked over to the bush by the side of the orange tree and carefully pulled out the syringe that had been used to inject the caliph. There were drugs of a thousand hues available inside the palace, served to its courtiers on trays like iced sherbet, but what drug could be so powerful that the grand vizier was using it to make such an utter vassal of the caliph? How addictive would such filth have to be? Omar didn’t know the answer to that, but there were chemists inside the capital who might be able to produce an antidote to it and restore some semblance of a ruler able to stand up to the grand vizier’s ambitions. Omar pocketed the empty syringe. The proof was mounting up against Immed Zahharl — the trick would be to stay alive long enough to use it.

  Omar climbed back up the tree and used the vine to retrace his steps to the next level of the hanging gardens. He had other steps he had to retrace, too. One of the grand vizier’s murderous disciples was taking Shadisa down to the lair of the womb mages and Omar knew the way there — the lifting rooms by the library’s entrance burrowing all the way to its lowest levels. There was only one victory that mattered to Omar. I’m coming for you, Shadisa, I’ll follow you to hell and back.

  He ran back towards the exit. Shadisa wasn’t dead yet.

  Standing at the end of the wardroom, Vice-Admiral Tuttle indicated that he was finished with the ground party’s report on the caliph’s deadly new innovation — the aerial mine. Their find was, Jack supposed, one scrap of small comfort for the admiralty politician, his name now attached to one of the greatest naval defeats the Royal Aerostatical Navy had ever suffered — and at the hands of their enemies to the south, mere novices in the trade of airship flight. Jack could imagine the uproar when news of this defeat started circulating at home. The newssheets would send mobs flailing at the doors of parliament, demanding heads roll for this fiasco. The grim nodding faces of the Iron Partridge’s officers seated around the table indicated they concurred with what Jack was imagining as their reception back home.

  At least the vice-admiral would have an example of the enemy’s secret weapon to present to the fleet’s airship yards for their engineers to try to devise a counter-defence. Jack had already heard some of the wilder ideas of the crew on the subject — everything from protective nets, using rotors to blow the mines off course, or launching lead weights on miniature chutes to set the mines off early.

  ‘This is a devious innovation,’ announced the vice-admiral, ‘but one that will be easily exceeded by the navy’s air yards. We will carry the defused mine back to the Kingdom and present it to the admiralty with all haste, so that our next engagement can be made on more equal terms.’

  Seated at the table of officers, First Lieutenant Westwick leapt to her feet. ‘We will not. Without the admiral’s presence to countermand our orders, the Iron Partridge is back under independent command.’

  In the absence of a seance, Jack judged it unlikely the admiral’s ghost would be countermanding anyone. Was his corpse one of those I was poking through on the sands below?

  ‘Under whose command, my dear?’ the vice-admiral laughed, pointing at the captain’s vacant chair. Jericho was in his cabin again, struck by his dark humours and refusing to come out. ‘Yours? Your naval commission is caught somewhere between being a mere formality and a high farce.’

  ‘The source of the enemy’s celgas is more important than ever,’ insisted the first lieutenant. ‘The loss of the Fleet of the South has shown the failure of conventional tactics against the empire. We need to raid deep into Cassarabia for answers.’

  ‘This vessel is under the command of the Royal Aerostatical Navy, not the State Protection Board,’ the vice-admiral raised his voice. ‘I am a vice-admiral of that navy, your superior officer, and by my order we are retuning to Jackals.’

  ‘I heard you were a coward, sir,’ said the first lieutenant. ‘Always to be found at the rear of a squadron, as far away from danger as your position could afford you.’

  ‘You will not offer such vile insubordination to me!’ yelled the vice-admiral.

  ‘Marines,’ shouted the first lieutenant towards the two Benzari guarding the door, ‘arrest the vice-admiral and place him in the brig.’

  The two marines advanced on the vice-admiral and seized his arms to an uproar from the officers around the table, some protesting the arrest of a senior officer, others supporting the principle of independent command in the absence of a living ranked flag officer to countermand it. Jack was pushed back against the wall in the melee. If only Jericho was here to call order on the riot.

  Oldcastle clearly had the same idea. ‘Run to the skipper’s cabin, Mister Keats, Mister Shaftcrank. Rouse Jericho from his black dog and bring him here even if you have to shove a pistol in his blessed back to do it.’

  Jack and Coss were attempting to leave by the wardroom’s exit hatch when the door swung open and a mob of sailors clutching cutlasses and marine carbines burst in. Master Engineer Pasco was at
the head of the table, waving the rabble in.

  ‘Shut it down,’ yelled the burly engine master over the ruckus, his men fanning out down the sides of the wardroom, shoving Jack and Coss against the officer’s table with their rifle butts. The two Benzari marines were overpowered and pushed to the floor, the vice-admiral struggling to his feet.

  ‘This is mutiny, Mister Pasco,’ spat the first lieutenant.

  ‘So it is, my dear,’ answered the vice-admiral. ‘But it is not being committed by the master engineer and his men. You have chosen to go against the written orders of a flagged admiral and disobeyed the lawful orders of a superior officer and it is you that is to be charged with mutiny. I am relieving Captain Jericho of command, and you and your minions are to be brigged pending a court martial. Jericho will be confined to his cabin under guard for the rest of the voyage.’

  ‘You’re out of line,’ protested the master cardsharp. ‘On what basis are you relieving the master and commander of this vessel?’

  ‘Gross dereliction of duty,’ smiled the vice-admiral. ‘He burnt a Cassarabian prize vessel rather than handing it over to the admiralty as he was required by regulations to do. If we had properly examined the enemy airship you had captured, we would have discovered its aerial mines and the Fleet of the South would not have been lost!’

  Jack groaned. The duplicitous navy politician had found a way to scapegoat the captain for the loss of the Fleet of the South after all.

  ‘There were no mines on board the prize vessel,’ called Jack. ‘Their bomb bays weren’t even loaded — the ship was rigged light for long distance patrol.’

  ‘Shut your mouth, thief,’ said Pasco. ‘You’re only on this ship because you were in the pokey with Jericho. We all know it. Nobody checked the prize vessel properly; she was burnt as fast as your Benzari wild boys could lay charges inside her.’