The Guns Above Read online

  “To your guns!” she called. “Don’t make their mistake, Ensign.”

  She hardly needed to say it. Kember was the picture of sangfroid, staring coolly along the barrel of the port bref gun as it traversed with aching slowness across the mist-blurred enemy’s belly. Only when it was perfectly lined up did she pull the lanyard and unleash a shot that cut into them amidships and came out through the tail. The enemy ship pitched up as buoyancy was lost from her stern, but she still floated and she still had teeth.

  “Shift ballast aft! We’ll put another one into her deck!” Josette cried up the companionway. Jutes repeated the order and Mistral’s weight shifted tailward as riggers ran aft along the catwalk, bringing the ship up by the bow.

  Ensign Kember stood behind the starboard gun as Mistral tilted up. A musket fired on the enemy deck, and the ball hit to Kember’s right. She flinched but held her ground. Bernat raised his rifle and fired; where the musket shot had come from, there now came a scream.

  An eternity passed as Mistral pitched up and the bref gun slowly elevated, until finally the enemy’s hurricane deck crept out of eclipse behind the bow and Kember fired her bref gun. The effect was worth the wait. Where the canister hit, the Vins’ keel buckled, kinking the line of the enemy ship so that she caved in at the middle. Girders splintered all along their keel, bursting bags from one end of the ship to the other. She plunged downward with such speed that the suction of her passing pulled Mistral forward from a dead stop.

  Bernat and half the cannoneers were leaning over the side, watching the other ship go down. Josette screamed at them to stay low, then called up to Jutes, “Make sure everyone’s lying flat, Sergeant!”

  Though confused at first, all her crew seemed to remember the third ship at the same moment. Josette looked aft, trying to find the ship that was coming to kill them amid the orange clouds. She couldn’t make it out. It ought to be directly astern of them by now, but she could see only vague shadows.

  She saw the stab of flame.

  No, she saw four tiny stabs of flame, followed by faraway musket cracks. “Goddamn it, I ordered that blimp to run,” she said. The third Vin chasseur wasn’t engaging Mistral because Swamp Hen had engaged it. Now she saw the chasseur as it fired a flaming carcass shot that streaked across the sky from left to right.

  She ran up the companionway. “Everyone back up! Back to work! I need my steamjack running right now!”

  * * *

  ONCE THE RIFLES were reloaded, Bernat went up the companionway to see if he could help, but Jutes stood in the way and shook his head.

  “Might be best if you didn’t venture aft, my lord.”

  While Bernat was trying to work out the reason for this, something sharp and heavy fell from the turbine assembly, landing with a crash in a detached section of the housing. Steam gushed from the space it left, until Grey ran to the boiler and closed a valve. Josette unleashed a roiling torrent of curses as she strained to lift the fallen piece with the help of two crewmen.

  “There’s that, for one,” Jutes said.

  Ensign Kember came up the companionway, moving past Jutes before he could speak a word of caution. “Sir,” she reported to Josette, who was elbow-deep in the turbine assembly. “We’re still sinking.”

  “Then toss the sand ballast and whatever’s left of the stores,” Josette said, without looking away from her work.

  “We don’t have any left, and we’re about to drop below a thousand feet and lose cloud cover.”

  “Then toss the round shot!” Under the keel, the sound of drums could be heard. “We won’t need it in this soup, anyway, and you might even hit some Vin fusiliers going past below.”

  “Are we out of the fight?” Bernat asked Jutes, at what he thought was a low volume.

  Josette’s eyes whipped toward him. “What’s that?”

  He took a step back, nearly falling down the companionway.

  “What did you say?” she asked again. Before he could answer, she went on. “This ship is not out of the fight. This fight will not last much longer by the sound of it, but by God, Mistral will be in it.” She looked at Grey and the nearby crewmen. “Everyone understand that?”

  “I, ah, I think I’ll be on deck,” Bernat said.

  Jutes nodded. “That may be best, my lord.”

  At the rail, Bernat watched the battle between blimp and chasseur take place in the haze ahead. The action was moving steadily away, he thought. It seemed to be moving higher in the sky, too, but that might only be Mistral sinking.

  As another carcass shot streaked toward the Swamp Hen, one of the cannoneers asked, “How the hell is that blimp still alive?”

  “The chasseur’s more interested in getting to our cannon batteries than fighting a blimp,” Lupien said from the rudder station. “See how she’s farther away every time she fires? And the blimp can turn faster than any chasseur. If she stays close, she can keep out of their gun sights. I pulled that trick myself a few times, when I was rudderman on a blimp in Quah.”

  Half a dozen skeptical eyes turned to Lupien.

  “Well, once or twice,” Lupien admitted. Under further stares, he caved. “Okay, once, for a few minutes, before a friendly chasseur rescued us.”

  The cannoneers were now tossing cannonballs over the side, and it was beginning to have an effect. When Bernat next saw the distant flash of the blimp’s four muskets firing together, it was nearer to level. “We’re rising,” he said. “I think we’re light.”

  “Give it a minute,” Kember said. “With all the holes in us, we’ll be heavy again soon enough.” She was about to say something else when a cannon fired somewhere off the port bow. Unlike the incendiary carcass shot fired by the Vin chasseur at the inflammable blimp, this one exploded in the eye-searing starburst of shell shot.

  Kember shouted back, “Lapwing’s joined.”

  When Jutes relayed the message, it did not elicit the enthusiasm that Bernat expected. Far from taking the pressure off, it caused Josette to erupt into another fit of cursing about getting Mistral into the fight before it was too late.

  “I’d thought the news of another ship taking over for us would make her happy,” he said to Kember.

  Kember made an incredulous face. “You thought the captain would be happy to have another airship arrive late to the scene and steal our glory? Apologies for being blunt, my lord, but you’re a very naive fellow.”

  He shrugged and said, “You may be right.”

  As Bernat watched the battle ahead, a slurping gurgle sounded from the keel, followed by a string of staccato clinks that only faded when eclipsed by a hellish scream rising from the steamjack. But when the screaming of metal on metal subsided, the steamjack was spinning. It was grinding as it turned, and making the most disconcerting honking sound at regular intervals, but it was spinning. And now that the gears were engaged, the airscrews were beginning to turn, and Mistral dragged herself forward.

  “I don’t know how long it’s gonna last, Captain,” he could hear Grey saying from the keel.

  “You will make it last, Private,” Josette said at the companionway. She came down the steps, still rubbing grease from her hands with a stained rag. “Corporal Lupien, steer straight at them.”

  * * *

  MISTRAL LIMPED TOWARD the aerial battle, hemorrhaging steam and luftgas as the drums of the Vin advance played somewhere below. On the cusp of shell range, Josette heard a sound behind her like a musket ball hitting metal.

  She immediately knew what had happened. They’d had to jury-rig several of the steam nozzles, and one of the damn things had come off. She could already hear it flying around inside the steamjack, striking blades and ricocheting in the tight space. If it caught in one of the gaps left by a broken blade, it might tear the entire assembly to pieces.

  “Shut her down!” she called, turning to go up the companionway.

  Grey was already turning valves to cut off the flow of steam. Now it was the private’s turn to utter an unending stream of curses
. She took up a wrench and began the tedious process of removing the housing to get at the steamjack.

  Josette was about to go back to help, but saw several crewmen already assisting, and knew that she’d only be in the way of this operation. Only one person was required to get at the steam nozzle, and anyone else could only help by passing tools or holding a pan of loose bolts.

  Josette returned to the deck. Ahead, Lapwing and the Vin chasseur were exchanging shell shot. If it were her out there, she’d want to close in and finish the matter with canister, but these two seemed content to dillydally at medium range. Flickering light suggested fires aboard both chasseurs.

  “The ship to port is Lapwing?” she asked Ensign Kember, who had been watching without interruption.

  “Yes, sir. She’s having a hard time of it, but with Swamp Hen pricking the enemy ship from the other side, I think she can hold on.”

  Josette stood and watched the exchange. It was all she could do, apart from yelling at the mechanic’s mate to hurry up. She was about to do exactly that when a flickering light in the clouds ahead betrayed another fire. It was a little to starboard, which might put it on the tail of the Vin ship.

  No. It was burning upward in a straight line, which meant it was spreading along a gondola’s suspension cable. “Good God,” she said.

  “You don’t think it’s the blimp, do you?” Ensign Kember asked.

  She’d hardly gotten the words out when she received her answer. The fire creeping up Swamp Hen’s suspension cable had reached the envelope, and now it flashed into a brilliant red spot, which bloomed into the outline of the blimp’s envelope. For a moment, it illuminated Swamp Hen from within, making her look like some gigantic, festive paper lantern. In the next moment, the fire burnt itself out and left nothing but empty cloud. The noise of it reached them as a hollow thump, which struck Josette as a strangely subdued sound with which to send four men plummeting to their deaths.

  She pushed the thought away and set her mind to how Swamp Hen’s loss affected the tactical situation. It doomed Lapwing, most likely, and Mistral as well, if it permitted the enemy ship to deal with them one at a time. So she had to bring Mistral quickly into the fight, in any capacity possible. “Fire the guns,” she ordered.

  “We can’t aim them without power, sir.”

  “Thank you for that insight, Ensign. Now fire the damn guns.”

  It would at least give the enemy chasseur something else to think about. If they believed they were under fire, they might even return fire on Mistral, providing Lapwing a small window in which to take decisive action.

  Bernat, standing at the rail and seeming to understand the implication of the order, asked, “Tell me, is ‘sacrificial distraction’ a higher or lower rank than ‘ballast,’ in the air corps?”

  “Lower,” Josette said, “but it comes with a free cannonball, if you can catch it.”

  “I’d like to decline that honor,” he said, “but I’ll be pleased to wave as it goes past.”

  Kember stood behind her cannon. She pulled the lanyard and the bref gun spit impotent smoke and fire into the clouds. She repeated the procedure on the other gun.

  After a few quiet seconds, Bernat asked, “Did it work?”

  A blot of flame colored the clouds ahead. “Down!” Josette shouted, before dropping to the deck. The enemy’s shot tore through the space where her body had been, knocking the air out of her lungs with the concussion of its passage. It ripped through the companionway stairs behind her, showering the aft end of the hurricane deck with shards of oak.

  As she gasped for breath, she heard Bernat say, “I forgot to wave.”

  She looked up to see him leaning against the rail. “I think you forgot to duck,” she said.

  He swallowed. “And that as well.”

  He helped her to her feet, and she stood staring at the demolition of the companionway ladder. The shot would have gone straight through her chest if she’d been standing.

  “Shall I fire again, sir?” Kember asked.

  Josette shook her head. “No. If we fire from the same place, they’ll know we’ve lost power.”

  “And that would be a shame,” Bernat added, “because they might lose interest in killing us.”

  “Precisely,” Josette said, without irony. She turned and went up the companionway, stepping mindfully on only the intact steps. In the keel, Grey was bolting the housing back onto the steamjack.

  Another cannon blast sent the deck crew, Bernat included this time, dropping to the deck. Josette half scrambled, half fell from the companionway. Yet no cannonball came. Instead, a shell burst about a hundred yards in front of Mistral, in the spot she would have been in if she were still under power.

  “Where the hell is Lapwing?” Josette asked, returning to her station.

  “She’s that glowing patch over there, sir,” Kember said. “I think she’s taken advantage of the distraction to stop and fight her fires.”

  “Goddamn it!” Josette shouted. “Grey, where is my goddamn power?”

  “Just bringing it up now, Captain!”

  The steamjack came back online, spinning up with the same screeching complaints as before. Josette turned forward and watched for the next discharge. When it came, and the rest of the deck crew dropped to the deck, she remained standing, fixing her eyes on the spot and burning it into her mind.

  The shell’s explosion brightened the clouds around Mistral’s bow, making a wedge of shadow under it. Josette felt the superstructure shake with the concussion of the blast, saw smoking fragments of the shell casing rip through the bottom of the envelope, and heard shouts of “Fire!” from the forward frames. She could see the flame casting a flickering glow on the clouds ahead, even as the light of the explosion faded.

  “Damage control forward,” she ordered.

  “Sir?” Jutes asked through the companionway. “It’s in a bad spot. I think we should stop and put this one out.”

  “Like hell we’re stopping. We just got moving again. Engine ahead, best possible speed. Ensign, load shell. Put your shot right there.” She pointed her open hand at the bearing and inclination where she calculated the Vin chasseur would now lie.

  As Mistral shuddered forward, the flames on her nose licked back along the envelope. The forward motion was helping to feed and spread the fire, but at least the ship was steerable and could point her guns.

  Kember fired the port cannon. The shell whistled through the clouds and burst, casting the shadow of a chasseur back toward Mistral. “Long!” Kember cried.

  The fuse was set shorter this time, the starboard cannon loaded. They fired almost simultaneously with the enemy ship, the shells whistling past each other in the air. The Vin shell burst above Mistral to send hot metal tearing through her amidships, while the Garnian shell burst at nearly the same time, but Josette couldn’t tell where it had hit until the fires broke out and she saw the smoldering outline of a chasseur’s bow. She’d hit them on the port side of their nose cone.

  The enemy ship was now plain in the clouds, given away by the expanding ring of flame burning through its envelope. She imagined that her ship must look much the same, except that her ship was driving on, barreling down upon them, while the enemy chasseur had cut its engine and was coming to a halt.

  “Reload with canister,” she ordered.

  “Sir, I really think we ought to stop,” Jutes called.

  “Tell the riggers to cut away the fabric of the envelope one frame ahead of the fire,” she said, by way of reply.

  “Which fire?” Jutes asked, a tinge of resigned irony in his voice.

  “The big one.”

  “Which big one, sir?”

  She looked up at him, and could see him haloed in red, illuminated from both sides by flickering light. She’d imagined the midships hit as something minor, but apparently it wasn’t. “The front one,” she said.

  “Sir,” he said, and relayed the order.

  Another cannon sounded through the mist, not from th
e enemy chasseur but from close behind it. The Vin ship’s flaming bow, now outlined as bright as day, heaved upward as if yanked by strings. It could only be due to a canister shot hitting her in the stern.

  “I think we’ve shamed Lapwing back into action,” Josette said to Bernat.

  “That, or she envies the size of our fires.”

  Before Ensign Kember could add another canister shot to the mix, the enemy chasseur sent up a blue flare. She threw down her lanyard in frustration. “Damn it,” she said as she watched the enemy ship drift slowly downward, “we came all this way for nothing.”

  “Cut steamjack,” Josette ordered. “All hands, damage control!”

  She turned and made her way up what was left of the companionway ladder. As she crested the top and looked along the keel, she could see her ship was already filled with choking black smoke.

  Bernat was right behind her, but stopped short when he saw it. “My God,” he said, the flickering flames reflected in his eyes.

  “I’m sorry, Bernie,” she said. “I fear I’ve killed us all.”

  17

  GENERAL LORD FIEREN Hinkal sat atop his horse, his second mount of the day, and stared into his teacup. His first horse lay amid her own entrails, back at his command tent. The unlucky beast, worth more than five hundred liras, had been hit by round shot with him astride her, throwing him off and absolutely ruining his best jacket to boot.

  He took a sip of tea, careful not to wet his mustache, and found it cold. He poured it out and called, “Tea!”

  While one of his aides galloped off to retrieve a teapot, he looked out onto the field. From this little hillock behind the Garnian line, he could see the Vin columns advancing, their screen of skirmishers in front. And then there were his dragoons, closing in on the skirmish line from the right, firing their carbines at a trot instead of charging home like they should have done.

  “Gaston!”

  Gaston appeared at his side and saluted. “Sir.”