Jack Cloudie j-5

by Stephen Hunt

  ‘Your transport ship, sir, should be left here for the withdrawal of both parties. I will take the Iron Partridge, warn the guardsmen attacking the city, and then proceed to engage the enemy.’

  ‘One vessel against the bulk of our new fleet,’ said Farris Uddin. ‘How much time can you buy us?’

  ‘That remains to be seen, commander, but we shall at least have the element of surprise on our side,’ smiled Jericho.

  ‘I find this war of ours a funny sort,’ said Farris Uddin. ‘For the more I fight, the harder I find it to tell the sides apart. Tell the guardsmen that half the talon wings are to stay and harass the city’s defences, the other half are to accompany you in assaulting the grand vizier’s fleet.’

  Jericho nodded, then glanced over at the commodore. ‘And for a ship in action, I will need more than Mister Shaftcrank manning that infernal calculating pit some fool of an airwright saw fit to drop into m’vessel.’

  ‘The master cardsharp’s skills are required here,’ said First Lieutenant Westwick. She held up the bag of supposedly looted booty from the wardroom she was carrying, silver plate and cups concealing the spies’ small, efficient transaction engine — the same one that Jack and the commodore had used to crack the enemy vessel they had boarded under the skies of Benzaral.

  ‘Well, there it is then,’ whined the commodore, looking at Jack. ‘The cold, grey wretches of the State Protection Board had their claws sunk into me long before they made me exchange my sea legs for air legs. My business it seems is here, which means, Mister Keats, that yours needs to be on the Iron Partridge.’

  ‘You haven’t got me killed yet, sir,’ said Jack.

  ‘I believe we’ll both get ample chances to make a go of that, lad,’ said the commodore. ‘You on the ship, and I here. Poor old Blacky. Alone, always alone. Well, they say that you go out of the world much as you come into it — on your own account.’

  ‘Don’t worry, old man,’ said Omar. ‘We have blades enough to keep you safe.’

  ‘Tigers to guard me from hyenas, so it is,’ said the commodore.

  ‘My place is by your side too, captain,’ the hulking Henry Tempest spoke up from within the party of officers masquerading as prisoners.

  ‘A captain of marines on board the ship, with all our marines left marooned back in Benzaral by the vice-admiral?’ Jericho shook his head. ‘Your place is here with our mission. Keep our two shadowy servants of the state alive. And Henry …?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Try not to get yourself in the stockade again back home. I might not always be around to get you released. You may have your men escort the boy and myself back to the Iron Partridge, Commander Uddin. First Lieutenant Westwick, the command here in the citadel is yours — although I suspect in reality, it probably always was.’

  Westwick shrugged almost imperceptibly. ‘Sell yourself dearly, captain.’

  ‘The Royal Aerostatical Navy knows no other price, m’dear.’

  Farris Uddin started shouting commands behind them. Ordering the local ground crew to release the Iron Partridge and let their precious ironclad prize vessel sail to the safety of the landing fields to the south. Demanding that the torturers who had requested the presence of the Jackelian prisoners present themselves and lead the party to whatever hell-damned cutting rooms and cells they had ready.

  The commodore waved sadly towards Jack, as Omar and another solider walked Jack and the skipper back down the harbour passageway, towards the vessel’s port walkway hatch. Whether the commodore was more concerned about Jack’s fate or his own was impossible to tell.

  ‘You and Jack Keats are very brave, captain,’ said Omar. ‘When you engage the grand vizier’s fleet, I believe you might almost be considered as courageous as me.’

  Jericho shrugged off the praise. ‘Thank you, guardsman. Although to be that brave, I’d say I might have to mount one of those flying monstrosities you sally about on, d’you see, and if truth be known, I still suffer from air sickness after all these years.’

  Omar cranked open the hatch door to the Iron Partridge while he and the other guardsman pushed down Jack and Jericho’s heads to enter, allowing them to slip their wrist knots as they entered the airship.

  ‘I shall keep my vow to my father’s shade, now, Jack Keats,’ pledged Omar. ‘If the grand vizier is inside the citadel, then so is that beast Salwa. And I will see them both suffer for what they have done to the woman I loved, to my people and my house.’

  ‘I’ll ask that god of yours to see you through to success,’ said Jack. If he’ll listen to a Jackelian heathen.

  As the hatch closed, Captain Jericho called out, ‘A word of advice, guardsman, passed down from an old soldier. The trick isn’t what you do when you’re fighting; it’s more often what you do when you’re not.’ He turned back to Jack as the door clanged shut. ‘An honest hard pounding, Mister Keats, trading shots vessel to vessel. A lot better for us than all that skulking about in the shadows that the State Protection Board’s agents seem to enjoy so much, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘The transaction-engine chamber will stand ready, sir.’

  ‘I trust that will be the case,’ said Jericho. ‘And Mister Keats …’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘I don’t have any living descendents. When waterman’s sickness claimed m’wife, it took m’poor boy too. Before we left the Kingdom, I took the liberty of bequeathing m’navy pension to your two young brothers. The admiralty’s generosity verges on the skimpy, but it will be enough to secure them both means outside the workhouse.’

  Jack felt his heart beat fast within his chest and for a second he did not know what to say to this mercurial, flame-haired officer. My captain.

  ‘Thank you, truly.’ It doesn’t matter if I die, now. Saul and Alan will have a future. They’re free! Whatever happens here, they’re free.

  ‘To your post, boy. Run. No dawdling now. Keep m’calculation drums turning and our course true, and we shall see what fashion in tactics these late additions to the party have to bring to our little soiree.’

  Jack felt the deck lurch, as the connector arm to their nose lock was set free. The skipper was already down the corridor, his booming voice barking commands and banging on hatches.

  However imperfectly crafted, the Iron Partridge had been manufactured for war.

  Now, finally, she was to have one.

  Omar, Boulous, Farris Uddin and the six elite guardsmen fighters in their party had concealed their pistols and scimitars under stolen womb mages’ robes. Along with the white facemasks they had tied over their mouths, the disguise was completed with the addition of a small paper skullcap to tie down their hair.

  Omar could not contain his triumph at having discovered the womb mages’ robing room, which had also furnished disguises for their Jackelian friends who had since set off on their own mission, and come up with the suggestion of arranging their raiding party to resemble the mumbling line of sorcerers he had seen in the womb mages’ lair under the palace.

  ‘You are a little too eager to march down into the citadel, Cadet Barir,’ warned Farris Uddin as he adjusted the robes over his uniform. ‘Remember that we have come for the true Caliph Eternal. His freedom is our victory — nothing else. A little hatred keeps you alive, too much will make you dead.’

  But it’s not a little hatred I feel towards Shadisa’s killers. I burn with it. My body is filled with it. My soul is a sea of it. ‘And which of the many men that you have been coined that saying, Master Uddin?’

  ‘All the uniforms I have worn across the years have been in the service of the Caliph Eternal,’ rebuked the commander. ‘As have all my faces. Although not quite as many as the hundred faces of the one true god, for that would be a blasphemy.’

  ‘You have my sword, Master Uddin,’ said Omar. ‘May the hundred faces of heaven smile on me when I sink it into those who deserve it.’

  ‘I have always had your sword,’ said Farris Uddin. He dipped his scimitar out from under the womb mage’s
mantle. ‘For the true Caliph Eternal and the empire. Are we sworn to it?’

  The others raised their swords and joined them in a circle of shining steel.

  ‘For thousands of years the bloodline of Ben Issman, his name be blessed, has ruled as Caliph Eternal on the throne of empire. Let us see what manner of man Immed Zahharl is, that he thinks he shall be the power behind the throne.’

  ‘Shall we seize a senior womb mage, Master Uddin?’ asked Boulous. ‘Tickle him with our sabres until the dog tells us where the Caliph Eternal is being held?’

  ‘There will be few within the citadel privy to the secret of his existence,’ said the commander. ‘In this matter, we shall have to follow our noses.’

  Omar hesitated before speaking, ‘I think I know where he is. I saw the false caliph back in the palace. I can sense him here in the citadel — I can sense both of them, the grand vizier’s pet and the true caliph.’

  ‘A tracker’s ability?’ said Boulous. ‘That is a strange trait for the son of a water merchant to possesses.’

  ‘Do not be so quick to judge. Our people’s bloodlines have twisted and turned for hundreds of generations,’ said Farris Uddin. ‘Mixing and becoming intermingled. There is many a young emir who has suddenly found himself growing a wild nomad’s water hump as he reaches his adult years and is sent, running in tears, to the womb mages to be cleansed of a great-grandmother’s indiscretion. The question is, can your senses distinguish between the false Caliph Eternal and the true?’

  Omar shut his eyes and tried, but when he opened them he shook his head sadly. ‘No, I can feel no difference.’

  ‘It will be subtle,’ said Farris Uddin. ‘Subtle and composed of a hidden reworking of the genes — blood engineering passed down from the Caliph Eternal to his chosen successor. For if it were not, everyone would be able to seize control of the beyrogs and the caliph’s private stables, and that would hardly do. Luckily for us, I possess a subtle nose.’ As he spoke, his nose began to grow longer, becoming muzzle-like. As if he were a wolf, Farris Uddin sniffed the air and grinned ferociously. ‘You are right; it is very hard to tell the difference. If you did not know there were a true Caliph Eternal and a false one, you would miss it completely. But I have the slight advantage of having met the real Caliph Eternal.’ He opened the door to the robing room and pointed down the citadel. ‘This way …’

  ‘Now,’ said First Lieutenant Westwick while she adjusted the settings on their tiny portable transaction engine, watching as the commodore fiddled with the cables hanging from a bank of the womb mages’ engines, ‘would be the ideal time for your young cardsharp friend to be in our company.’

  ‘This is a walk in the park compared to the calculation drums back home,’ said the commodore. ‘We stamp our art out in steel and steam, the Cassarabians write theirs in flesh and blood. But I don’t have to tell you that, eh?’

  Henry Tempest gave a gentle whistle from the door leading into the womb mages’ transaction-engine chamber, indicating someone was coming down the corridor, and the pair briefly halted their noise until the officer thumbed them the all clear.

  ‘Keep the connection and their calculation drums turning while I get down to this,’ said Westwick.

  ‘Are you going to try and crack deep into their systems, lass?’

  ‘I would never attempt something so dangerous,’ said Westwick. ‘But you know how you can tell which chest a house’s really valuable silver is hidden in?’

  ‘Ah,’ said the commodore. ‘I see the board’s training is worth something after all.’

  Westwick inspected the results on their portable transaction engine. ‘Here it is. The level of the citadel with the strongest data encryption.’

  ‘So we’ll follow the trail of locks, then,’ said the commodore. ‘Right down to their strongest, and let’s see how they stand up against the genius of old Blacky. Ah, it sounded such a slight little favour when it was asked back home. Just find out how they’re floating their airship’s envelopes, Jared. That’s all. Your old Cassarabian friends will remember you kindly, won’t they? Winkle out the secrets of their airships’ gas for us. And here we are in the Forbidden City, the three of us against an empire full of enemies while our best chance of escape is sailing towards her end. Not even a drop of RAN rum to wet my lips while I sweat under these wicked robes. You see how cruel fate is to me, Maya?’

  ‘That is the nature of fate,’ said Westwick. ‘It runs, as our allies here would say, as heaven wills.’ She looked over at the captain of marines. ‘Sup from your green canteen, Henry. You need to stay calm until we get to the lower levels of the citadel.’

  ‘I’ve been taking too much green, tonight, first lieutenant,’ complained the officer from his watch post. ‘I’m going to bleeding sleep over here.’

  ‘Think of it as the milk that lines the stomach before the beer,’ said Westwick. ‘You’ll have your thirst quenched before we leave the citadel, that much I guarantee you.’

  ‘Does it taste good, lad, that blessed soup of yours?’ asked the commodore, as if the thought of its quality had only just occurred to him.

  ‘No, master cardsharp,’ said Tempest. ‘It’s just what you need, not what you want.’

  ‘A cruel fate, like I said, a wicked cruel fate.’

  Jack had already received the order to ready for battle stations when the transaction engine’s main communications pipe began to whistle like a kettle coming to boil.

  Another request?

  He and Coss had just been warned by the runner from the crow’s-nest dome that three enemy vessels forward of the main fleet had been sighted, acting as a pathfinder squadron, each a match for the Iron Partridge. They and the drak-riding guardsmen accompanying them would soon have a quarrel on their hands.

  Jack could almost hear the commodore’s comment on their situation. ‘A little appetizer for you lad, before the main course is served.’

  Coss got to the communications pipe before Jack could slide the punch-card writer to lock and the steamman called across. ‘Captain Jericho for us, with an urgent request.’ The steamman switched the pipe to public address, the captain’s booming tones echoing over the sound and heat of their rotating, rattling calculation drums. ‘Bridge to the transaction-engine chamber. Check the archive of the ship’s schematics and see if we have a detailed specification for that exotic composite our celgas is bagged up in.’

  ‘Sir?’ said Jack. What’s he up to now?

  ‘It’s been said that the fellow who designed the Iron Partridge was the cleverest man in the Kingdom. It strikes me that if he replaced canvas with that peculiar cloth of his on our gas cells, there might be a reason for it, eh? Tensile strength, gentlemen, pressure per square inch. I require a swift lift for the vessel. I need to know if I can order our regassing tower crew to double the density of the cells — if we’ll hold or if we’ll burst.’

  ‘Double our celgas density over what time period, captain?’ asked Coss.

  ‘A minute, Mister Shaftcrank.’

  ‘Sir,’ protested the steamman, ‘there’s only one vessel that has ever attempted such a manoeuvre and she-’

  ‘I’m quite aware of what happened to the RAN Hotspur. Bring up those schematics from the engines’ archives,’ roared Jericho. ‘I’m going to play a little variation on the game of rock, paper, scissors. I call it carper, canvas, and iron — and I’m playing iron as m’hand.’

  The captain’s voice faded from the chamber and Jack began working on dredging the dustiest corners of their records for the airwrights’ specifications. ‘He’s planning on ramming them, old steamer.’

  ‘By the copper beards of my ancestors,’ moaned the steamman. ‘The Loas preserve me from the mad schemes of you rash fast-bloods.’

  ‘The Cassarabians poked about on board when we were a prize vessel,’ said Jack. ‘They know we fly low and slow. Their ships are going to climb for height, and the skipper wants to bounce us right up into their bows.’

  Jack gritted his teet
h even as he said the words. They might dig up the tensile strength of their gas cells from the archives, but there wouldn’t be a solitary number on record to indicate whether the oddly crafted Iron Partridge could survive ramming a single Cassarabian airship, let alone three of them.

  What was war anyway, but a collective, consensual madness between two nations? And they were under the command of an officer whose lunacy had been weighed by an admiralty that had judged him and run scared, leaving him marooned on the half-pay list. Only the next few minutes would reveal whether that was to make the Iron Partridge the deadliest ship in the fleet. Or the deadest.

  Omar stopped at the door to read the elaborate script that had been traced on a copper plate by its side, but Farris Uddin did the job for him for the benefit of all the guardsmen disguised as womb mages, the commander’s tones inflected with a lisp-like quality by the length of his hunting nose.

  ‘Let only those womb mages of the Sect of Razat, or accompanied by the Sect of Razat, set foot beyond this boundary,’ said Farris Uddin. ‘And a saying from the twelfth book of Ben Issman, his name be blessed. “Let the efforts of your flesh be dedicated to progress, for in progress shall you be elevated.”’ Farris Uddin shook his head in anger.

  ‘Only the trusted may enter,’ said Omar. We are getting close.

  ‘Is this a warning or a call to heresy?’ asked Boulous.

  ‘One sect to control everything under god,’ said Farris Uddin. ‘This is the grand vizier’s vision — the destruction of the Holy Cent. He thinks he makes the empire stronger? He will tear us apart in ancient schisms by his perversions of the scripture’s holy word.’

  Grimly, they pressed on through a series of narrow corridors, the end of the last corridor leading onto a gantry flanked by railings that crossed above a vault-like chamber perhaps a hundred feet high. The gantry branched out into smaller walkways to allow the womb mages access to the tanks below; hundreds of glass cases filled with every sort of creation the womb mages’ craft could call into existence. There were some creatures that looked to be related to the familiar biologicks that Omar recognized — the guardsmen’s draks, as well as the sandpedes the caravans used to cross the dunes — but the majority of the beasts were completely unfamiliar. Four-legged things the size of horses but with black armour carapaces, overlarge versions of the fighting beetles that Haffa townsmen used to set against each other while they laid wagers; water-filled tanks where dwarven oil-furred humanoids twisted and cut through the liquid — their child-like eyes staring out beseechingly; another creature man-sized, but lurching about, all exposed white bones with chords of muscle, as if someone had made a scarecrow by tying together dozens of bundles of sticks. With so many raw animal smells rising up in such close confines, Omar had to work not to gag through his womb mage’s mask.