The Guns Above Page 9

  Josette held her hand out to Bernat, saying, “Congratulations, my lord.”

  “Did I win, then?” he asked, though he didn’t look surprised. “I had rather lost track of the score. But you must have done quite well, to stretch it out this long.”

  “My lord is too kind.”

  Jutes cut through the uncomfortable silence that followed, shouting, “Okay, you lazy bastards, back to work. I want these rifles cleaned and stowed!”

  The work on the airscrews and gearbox, which had come nearly to a halt during the contest of arms, now resumed, albeit with little enthusiasm. As she was going up the companionway to sketch out better airscrew configurations for Mistral’s first refit, Josette overheard one of the riggers expressing his hope that the captain was better at gear ratios than she was at pointing a rifle.

  For Josette’s part, she hoped that the crewman was better at shaving airscrews than he was at keeping his voice down.

  Josette sketched out a few potential airscrew configurations, worked out the theoretical stresses on the booms, and called Martel forward to get his opinion. He shuffled through her sketches, stopping at one that removed the outboard airscrews entirely and replaced the remaining four with standard four-blade chasseur airscrews.

  It was the design she liked the most, so naturally she expected disagreement, but Martel nodded and said, “I think this one’s a worth a shot. Gears was saying something about a more streamlined power train. I believe his exact words were, ‘She has all the power she needs, and not a clue how to use it.’”

  Josette snorted. “He was referring to the ship, wasn’t he?”

  Martel went pale. “Yes, sir,” he said. “To the ship, sir. I’m certain he didn’t mean to imply, sir…”

  “Calm down, Nic. It was just a joke.”

  She only wished she believed it herself.

  * * *

  IT WAS FINALLY lunchtime, thank heavens. Bernat tried to grease the wheels of rumor-mongering by offering to share a jar of lampreys in white wine sauce with the enlisted men, but he was coldly refused by all but the mechanic’s mate, Private Grey. For her, Bernat doled out a portion on bread and presented it as, “the best luncheon for the prettiest aboard.” It just about made the poor woman go weak in the knees, but that was only to be expected when receiving such a compliment from a man as handsome and charming as himself. The rest of the savages were happy to eat the most disagreeable pickled beef Bernat had ever seen, so he took his luncheon alone on the hurricane deck, sitting atop one of the snub-nosed cannons and watching the scenery drift past below.

  Even with the engine off, the crew contrived to make a disagreeable amount of noise. They were up in the keel, having their luncheon conversations, each small group speaking loud to be heard over the noise of the rest. The intervening girders and fabric did little to dampen the volume. It was a perfect shame, for the slow drift over the countryside would have otherwise been so peaceful.

  And so he employed the time by working on his letter, writing:

  This morning, she tore the very airscrews off her ship in a fit of pique. What the yardsmen had worked so hard to install, she ripped out in barely half an hour. She then, being spiteful of the airscrews’ length for reasons of female impulse, had a full foot cut off the ends of them, at once undoing the mathematically precise work of the army engineers and laying bare her own latent paranoia regarding the male organ.

  Now there was something that would play in the newspapers. He wished he could let this thread of inspiration roam further, but he had to cut his lunch and his letter short when the ship drifted beyond the farmland and over foul-smelling fens farther north. He wasn’t sure what its proper name was, but the crew referred to it as “Magdalene’s Twat.”

  Shortly after aborting his meal, he was relegated to the aft end of the hurricane deck so the cannon crews could prepare their guns. Apparently, the captain thought Magdalene’s Twat was a wonderful thing to fire cannonballs into. Bernat was on the cusp of a brilliant and raunchy observation on this state of affairs when the first gun went off and he nearly shit himself.

  It wasn’t just the deafening sound of the cannonade. He’d heard cannons before—cannons twice as large as these. It was the effect it had on the ship. The entire hurricane deck lurched backward, and the envelope above was pushed inward by the blast, sending a rippling wave through the canvas. Soot coated the underside of the envelope ahead of the cannons, and several embers were burning near the guns. The gun crews wet the ends of their swabs and put the embers out, in no particular rush.

  “Good God,” he said.

  “Don’t worry,” Ensign Kember said, coming to stand next to him. “The envelope is soaked in borate, and it’s triple-thick nearest the guns.”

  “And that prevents it from igniting?”

  “Most of the time,” she said with a smile.

  “Oh good. It’s reassuring to know that I won’t be on fire, most of the time.”

  The second gun was fired with similar effect, after which Dupre and Martel minutely examined the fabric, the guns, and the cables. Then Dupre planted her hand on the rail and jumped over the side.

  Bernat blinked twice. No one else seemed alarmed. “I didn’t realize things were going quite that badly for her.”

  “She’s clipped on,” Kember said. “She’s examining the underside of the deck for signs of stress.”

  “Someone needs to examine me for signs of stress.” Bernat couldn’t believe his uncle was afraid of a woman who took such casual risks. If he wanted to be rid of her, it seemed he merely had to wait a few days and she’d arrange the matter herself.

  Dupre climbed back over the rail, nodding her approval.

  “Reload starboard!” Jutes called as he came forward.

  The starboard gun crew, consisting of Private Corne and two other men, ran the bref gun in and locked it into its slide. Corne wet a swab and rammed it down the bore.

  Jutes, moving with a speed that didn’t seem possible on his injured leg, ran forward and grabbed Corne by the wrist just as he was pulling the swab free. “Have you decided to blow your bloody hands off?”

  Corne stared up at him, terror in his eyes.

  “I figure you must have decided to blow your bloody hands off,” Jutes screamed, red-faced, “because that is the only reason a dumb bastard such as yourself would do such a bloody poor job of swabbing out a goddamn cannon! I could do a better job if I shoved my dick in there and pissed down the barrel. I’d demonstrate, but it’s too big to fit.”

  “Is it not odd,” Bernat asked Kember at a whisper, “to task such an inexperienced man with loading something as dangerous as a cannon?”

  “Oh, that’s the least dangerous job for him,” she said. “A lot less dangerous than rigging or mechanical work. It’s the same reason the captain put me in charge of shooting them.”

  Bernat studied the girl. She did not appear to be joking, though he thought he remembered Sergeant Jutes saying something about women not being allowed to man—so to speak—a gun.

  The powder monkey ran up the companionway and came back with a flannel-wrapped gunpowder charge. He handed it off to the cannoneer on the left, who shoved the charge into the muzzle, then stood aside. Corne, waiting with a rammer on the right side of the gun, pushed the charge home. The left-side cannoneer hefted a cannonball from the ready rack along the forward rail.

  “If you drop that goddamn shot through the deck,” Jutes screamed, “you’d best jump after it.” This did not seem to help the man’s attentiveness, but he eventually got the ball fitted into the muzzle. Corne rammed it down the barrel, and both of them hauled on ropes to pull the gun forward on its slide.

  “Oh, here’s my part,” Kember said, giddy. She went to stand behind the gun, holding its lanyard in one hand.

  Dupre looked out over the featureless carpet of peat and mud below. “Target that tree ahead.”

  Bernat leaned over the side to see past the guns and their crews. The tree wasn’t much of a target
, but in these fens, it was about the only thing standing.

  Kember sighted down the length of the cannon. She turned the screw at the back three times to elevate the barrel, then back half a turn. She sighted again, stepped out of the way of the recoil, and pulled the lanyard. Though Bernat covered his ears, they still rang as the cannon flew back on its slide. He thought he saw the shot, a blurry streak in the air, and then a divot of peat was torn from the fen, ten feet in front of the tree.

  Martel whistled when he saw it. “Damn fine shot,” he said. “Your first time firing a bref gun?”

  Kember beamed. “First time in the air, sir. Thank you, sir.” She had puffed herself up so much that Bernat worried she might pop a button on her coat.

  “Well, what are you laggards waiting for?” Jutes yelled. “Reload!”

  They reloaded and fired one gun after the other, again and again and again, until the booming discharges became more annoying than startling. He went up the companionway and, after ballast was shifted to accommodate him, back to his sleeping bay, where he resumed his running letter with,

  She has violated that most sacred regulation of the air service, which forbids females from drawing blood, by placing her ensign—a mere girl—in charge of firing the ship’s cannons. It is one thing to employ women in this service as a matter of necessity, if indeed it is even a necessity, but Captain Dupre clearly has greater plans: to sap the very femininity from woman. Lacking any of her own and secretly envying this most noble and delicate trait in other members of her sex, she seeks to root it out wherever it is found. For the sake of man and woman alike, may she never succeed.

  * * *

  CHASSEUR CREWS ALWAYS enjoyed live fire practice, but this one was beginning to wear on them. Mistral drifted with the winds, so no cooling breeze blew across the deck. The gunpowder smoke lingered, and the air above the bref guns’ brass barrels rippled with heat. The cannoneers were stripped to the waist, glistening with sweat, and panting from exhaustion.

  “Reload!” Josette said.

  She would pay for this, not just with the further resentment of the crew, but in lost ballast. Every shot reduced the ship’s weight by twelve pounds of iron and one of powder. Under power, the engine could compensate for the imbalance, but even that could only do so much. Beyond a certain point, buoyancy won out, and they’d have to vent luftgas just to descend, dumping hundreds of liras’ worth of that precious gas and earning a letter of reprimand from the Army Supply Board. But she had to find out, sooner or later, whether this revolutionary new design could stand the recoil of both its guns firing continuously.

  The gun crews finished reloading and waited, expectant. “Secure bref guns,” she said.

  She made another inspection, finding damage to the transverse supports under the hurricane deck, but this was not unusual. It was expecting too much to think you could fire cannonballs from an airship without breaking something. Chips could repair the damage, but the ventral envelope was now irrevocably streaked with soot. That couldn’t be helped.

  Nor could the fop be bottled up for long, once the guns stopped. No sooner had she completed her inspection than Bernat came down the companionway, saying, “That’s a good deal quieter. My, we’re a long way up.”

  They were just climbing through three thousand feet, in fact. As the smoke slowly dissipated, all of Lake Magdalene became visible ahead of them. As far away as it was, Arle would have been visible aft, if it weren’t hidden by its own smoke.

  “The ship’s light,” she said. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to see to some things.” She went up the companionway, announcing her movement so that sandbags could be shifted to keep the ship in trim. The fop began to follow her, but she put her hand out and said, “Sorry, my lord, but if you could remain here. It’s a ballast issue.”

  In frame five, the new gearing was finally installed. Martel and the mechanics were crammed into the space around the gearbox, counting rotations to confirm the reduction factor. She left them to it and inspected the airscrews. Finding the varnish dry, she gave the order to have them remounted.

  With the gun exercise finished, Jutes had taken station farther aft, and was now supervising the shifting of ballast. “Damn shame about that contest, sir,” he said.

  She spoke in a low voice. “I can’t believe I lost to that foppish twit. I suppose the crew are snickering about it behind my back, eh?”

  Jutes didn’t deny it, which was as good as confirming it.

  Josette sighed. “Once word of this gets out, and he’ll make certain it does, I’ll be lucky if they make me a goddamn quartermaster.”

  Jutes clucked his tongue. “I’m sure it won’t be that bad, sir. They’ll probably just give you a blimp, or send you to the fever swamps.”

  She snorted. “You’re a true optimist, Sergeant Jutes.”

  “Runs in my family, sir. You know about my father?”

  She shook her head.

  “He was eaten by wolves, sir, right outside our cottage window. But after every bite they took of him, we heard him say, in the most hopeful manner, ‘Mayhap the brutes are full now.’”

  “Thanks, Jutes. That’s very uplifting.”

  He stood tall. “Anytime you need cheering up, sir.”

  When she returned to frame five, the mechanics were carefully passing an airscrew through an open port to a rigger dangling from the boom outside. The chief mechanic saluted and said, “We’re having to hurry, Cap’n, on account of our rate of climb.” That was a more tactful way of saying that some dumb bitch had decided to drop five hundred pounds of ballast by practicing the guns, and now they all had to scramble to get the ship under power before she went above her pressure height and forced them to vent luftgas to keep the bags from bursting.

  “Don’t rush, Gears,” she said. “If we have to vent, let it be on my head.” To hell with it. They could only make her a quartermaster once.

  But the remounting went smoothly, and the airscrews were ready before the ship passed four thousand feet. The steamjack was spinning up as Josette took her place on the hurricane deck. She closed her eyes and listened for the thrum of the airscrews. At full power, let alone emergency power, the tips of the shortened blades would still be moving faster than the designers had imagined, and that was before considering any weakness caused by shaving them. The laminated mahogany might fray when spun up, sending foot-long splinters into the envelope, the engine, and the crew.

  She could hear them spinning up now, a low-pitched growl under the high whine of the steamjack. This was the critical time, as the airscrews approached their full speed. At any moment, she might hear the keening wail of a splitting blade, the gunshot crack of its disintegration, and then the tearing, the shattering, the screams.

  “We’re at full power!” Gears called from amidships. Jutes repeated the report. She wished they would shut up. She could hear that they were at full power before Gears said it, and the update only distracted her from the sound of the airscrews.

  The healthy, satisfying, droning sound of the airscrews. They were well-seated and perfectly balanced. She opened her eyes and said, “Sergeant Jutes, please pass my regards to the mechanics and the carpenter. Elevators down ten. Bring her to one thousand feet and keep her there.”

  Even after reaching their target altitude, the keel was on a slight incline, as the steersman on the elevators had to point the bow down a few degrees to counteract the lightness of the ship. The sun-speckled surface of Lake Magdalene, now directly below them, offered no landmark with which to judge their speed, but the wind was whipping faster over the deck, and the kinemeter’s needle slowly turned across the face of its dial.

  It settled, twitching, at the tick mark for twenty-eight knots. Disappointed whispers rippled across the deck and up into the keel, and would no doubt spread aft even faster. The ship had gained speed from its modifications, but the gain was pitiful.

  Lieutenant Martel came down the companionway, looking first at the kinemeter, and then at Josette. “W
e are very light, sir. When we’re weighed off, we’ll gain half a knot, at least.”

  Which would still be unimpressive for a chasseur at full power. “She isn’t slow,” Josette said, words that were quickly becoming the ship’s mantra. She knew Mistral had more potential, but the bitch was miserly about giving it up. “Perhaps if we smoothed out the camber of the airscrews, they’d do better at high speed,” she said, more to herself than anyone else.

  A respectful but anxious look from Martel said that she’d be wise not to push her luck.

  “Well, let’s see how the rest of the trials go,” she said.

  6

  THE TRIALS WENT well enough. Apart from her sluggish top speed, Mistral wasn’t a bad ship. For three busy days, she worked her way north against headwinds, showing acceptable albeit unremarkable performance in her flight tests. Page by page, Martel’s logbook filled with figures quantifying every aspect of the ship’s performance.

  By morning on the fourth day, there were only three pages left unfilled, representing a dozen minor tests and two very significant ones. These were the high-speed rudder and elevator trials, which together constituted the real moment of truth for any new airship design. Nothing put more strain on a ship’s tail, save a blast of enemy canister shot or a thunderstorm. Indeed, structural failure of the tail due to high-speed maneuvers was one of the most popular causes of death in the Aerial Signal Corps, though flight engineers were forever claiming their new tail designs could survive three or even four times the maximum possible strain, and they always had the math to prove it.

  Most captains—among those who were still alive, at any rate—had the habit of bracing a ship’s tail with extra girders, planks, and line, no matter what the math said. But that option was not yet open to Josette. She was conducting aerial trials on a new tail design, and it must be that design which she tested.

  Her first order when she came on deck in the morning was to steer a course for the nearest semaphore tower. There, she could report on the progress of Mistral’s trials to date, and there would be a record of their last-known position, in case anything predictable happened.