The Aeronaut's Windlass (77 page)

Such as the
Mistshark
’s crew.

Espira looked up and saw burning web falling directly toward him. He seized Captain Ransom by the belt and pulled her back into the doorway of the cabin an instant before the web reached her. It struck the metal doorknob instead, sparking a bright flash of light that left a scorch mark on the metal. Even as the web settled,
Mistshark
became further unbalanced, her nose rising. Espira automatically snapped a pair of safety lines onto a pair of nearby hooks, in time to use their support to keep from being rocked off his feet from the ship’s wallowing.

“Dammit,
how
?” Captain Ransom snarled as the web piled down atop her ship, hundreds of feet long, and a nearly equal amount across. The deck was rapidly beginning to look like the inside of a silkweaver nest.

She snapped her goggles down over her eyes. “Santos!” she bellowed. “Signal rockets
now
! Keep them going!”

“Aye!” boomed the executive officer. A second later there was a rushing sound, and a comet trailing a blazing tail of fire lifted into the sky.

“Firefighting party to the deck!” she shouted.

“Aye, Skipper!”

“Guns, fire at will!”

Seconds later, ten etheric cannon opened fire on
Predator
—but the lean ship had already altered its course and abruptly dropped lower, evading the broadside and plunging back into the mists below. Just before it did, there was a rushing sound, and rockets raced out from
Predator
, exploding a thousand yards overhead into a thick, dense cloud of yellow smoke.

Ransom stared after the vanishing ship, her eyes narrowed in thought. Then she nodded and shouted, “Pilot, course change, twenty degrees west!”

“Twenty degrees west, aye!”

“Full speed ahead! Everything you’ve got!”

A second pair of
Mistshark
’s blazing signal rockets raced up into the blue sky.

“Aye, Skipper!”

The ship groaned as it banked and accelerated, wobbling like a drunkard. A wooden keg that had not been properly secured bounced across the steeply angled deck and tumbled over the side of the ship into the abyss below.

“Is this wise, Captain?” Espira asked quietly.

“No,” Ransom replied bluntly. “Goggles.”

Espira nodded and secured his eye protection, while Ransom drew her blade and began hacking at the ethersilk webbing blocking her passage to the deck.

“We can’t force him to fight with half our web shot away,” she said. “We’re too slow on our feet now. If we try it, he’ll outmaneuver us and take out the rest of our web within minutes, or work the angles to position himself at weak points in our fields of fire and hammer through our shroud. His ship is lighter and faster, so we can’t outdive him or escape into the mist, lamed as we are. Our only chance is to get to our escort before Captain Grimm turns us into a barge.”

Espira drew his sword and began hacking away at the ethersilk as soon as Ransom had progressed enough to give him room to swing it. She glanced at him and nodded silent approval.

“Captain Grimm,” Espira said. “There are a lot of people in Aurora who are coming to despise the man.”

Ransom bared her teeth, her eyes glittering as another pair of her ship’s rockets raced out above and behind them. “And to think, they weren’t even married to him.”

Chapter 66

AMS
Predator

E
xcellent shooting, Mister Creedy!” Grimm called out to the port-side gun crews. The shots hadn’t been difficult given the total surprise they’d attained on
Mistshark
, but fully half of Calliope’s web had been shot away, and at this point victory was only a matter of proper doctrine and intelligent maneuver. “Mister Kettle, stabilize us, if you please.”

Kettle nodded, already trimming the ship, bringing her level again after their dive into the mist to evade
Mistshark
’s hurried reply. “’Bout there should do it, Skip,” Kettle said.

Grimm nodded and turned to the gun crews. “XO,” he called, “transfer the crews to the starboard battery!”

“You heard him, boys,” Creedy called. “Secure your guns, unhook, and get to the other side!”

Predator
’s aeronauts leapt to obey, locking down the port-side guns again and crossing the ship to the bank of weapons on the opposite side. Grimm clenched his jaw. Casualties among his crew had been severe. He had only enough crews to man one bank of guns—but there was no sense in letting Calliope know that. Should she work out that he could project force from only one side of
Predator
at a time, she could complicate matters enormously.

“Captain!” called an aeronaut from the deck behind and below him.

Grimm turned to find Mister Eubanks, a stout, florid veteran with a bristling beard, waiting for him. “Report.”

“We just fired the last of the signal rockets, Skip.”

“Very good. You and your crew stand by for damage control.”

“Damage control, aye,” Eubanks said, and hurried back down the deck again.

“She’s banking, Skip,” Kettle noted, peering up at the red star still suspended in
Predator
’s shroud. It had begun to track more sharply to the west. Calliope was hoping to open some distance between her ship and
Predator
while Grimm was temporarily blinded by the mists.

“Adjust course, Mister Kettle,” Grimm said.

Kettle grunted and did so, as
Predator
maneuvered to ascend from the mist beneath
Mistshark
, this time on her other flank, and finish the job of laming her. Calliope had no way of knowing that
Predator
could see her.

“Something wrong, Skip?”

Grimm shook his head once. “No. But it hardly seems fair, does it?”

“No, it does not, Skipper. It certainly does not.” Kettle’s face split into an evil grin. “Ain’t it grand? Where can we get us one of those etherealists?”

“Let us survive the day first, and consider such matters later,” Grimm said. “Once we’re in position, we’ll use the same approach as last time. But once we’ve fired, we’ll accelerate our ascension to get above their guns’ elevation instead of diving under them.”

“That wasn’t hardly a dive,” Kettle pointed out.

“We don’t dare try any more than that,” Grimm said. “Journeyman says the power runs are barely holding together as it is. If we put the strain of a full dive on the ship, we could lose them entirely.”

It would, Grimm thought, be a horrible surprise to find out, mid-dive, that your ship had suddenly lost the ability to
stop
diving.

“Attack run and evasive ascension on your order, aye,” Kettle said. There was a sharp whistle. The pilot turned his head toward the starboard gunnery deck, and nodded. “XO reports guns are ready to fire, Skip.”

“Very good,” Grimm said, “stand by.”

“You think
Mistshark
will surrender once we’ve lamed her?” Kettle asked. “She’s got a good many fighting men on board.”

A pulse of hot anger touched Grimm’s chest. “They will surrender, Mister Kettle,” he said crisply, “or so help me God in Heaven, I will scatter that ship across continents.”

Kettle glanced aside at him, and Grimm saw the pilot shift his feet uneasily. Kettle lowered his voice, and his tone was cautious, concerned. “Don’t get me wrong, Captain. After what
Mistshark
did to that shipyard, I’m more ready than ever to blow her clean out of the aerosphere. But would you really do that . . . ?”

...to Calliope
, Kettle’s tone said, though he did not finish the sentence aloud. Grimm felt something twist and writhe inside him, a half-hysterical laugh that threatened to escape his lips. He hammered it down ruthlessly. “Only if she gives me no other choice.” He tried to offer Kettle a reassuring glance. “She is who she is. Do you really think she’s become a loyal soldier to the cause of Spire Aurora?”

Kettle snorted. “Point. She’ll yield. Unless the Aurorans don’t let her.”

“We are at war,” Grimm said quietly. “I will do what I must.”

Grimm closed his eyes for a moment and took a slow breath, trying to get a sense of the ship around him. He gauged the wind, felt the slight tilt in her deck of the weight of half her crew overloading the starboard side. He felt the quivering hum of her core crystal, a barely perceptible buzz through the soles of his boots. It was, of course, a romantic fancy that he almost felt he could hear the same subtle hum of power coming from the capacitors of the cannon on the starboard gun deck—but nonetheless his instincts confirmed what his intellect had already told him to be true.

Predator
was ready.

“Sound maneuvers!” Grimm called, and the aeronaut manning the ship’s bell began beating out the proper rhythm to warn the crew to secure themselves. “Stand by, gunners!”

“Gunners ready, Captain!” Creedy called.

Grimm double-checked his safety lines and snugged them tight. “Mister Kettle,” he said. “Commence attack.”

*   *   *

P
redator
shot up through the misty mezzosphere with the effortless grace of a cloudfin and the speed of a signal rocket. The acceleration in the ascension, driven by the enormous power of the new lift crystal, was at least as great as that the ship experienced in a dive. Grimm had to keep a firm grip on the railing of the bridge or risk being driven to his knees as the ship began to quiver and rattle—and then she began to sing.

Grimm knew that he should be presenting a stoic, solid, unmoving example to his men, become a graven image of steadfast discipline and determination—but he simply could not remain still. He could
feel
Predator
’s grace, the light and easy way she moved through the air, could feel the fierce, proud joy that filled her as she rushed into battle.

All of which was ridiculous, on a purely rational level. Grimm knew that, with his head.

His heart knew better.

As
Predator
’s war song swept up in pitch and volume, a crewman erupted into a howling cry of his own. Grimm realized, with something of a start, that the scream was coming from his own throat.

The bellow from the crew, a beat later, was the loudest Grimm had ever heard, despite their depleted numbers, and he could hear Creedy shouting with the rest of them.

The grey mist abruptly lightened, turning paler grey, then pearly, then white—and a breath later,
Predator
exploded out of the mezzosphere and into the wide blue sky.

Mister Kettle had timed his approach perfectly. They emerged from the cloud cover almost directly beneath the
Mistshark
, traveling at almost exactly the same speed, only a few hundred yards out. In their first attack run, surprise had been on
Predator
’s side. Now speed was everything.

“Fire at will!” Grimm shouted.

“Fire, fire, fire!” Creedy cried, relaying the command to the gun crews.

Predator
’s seven cannon fired almost simultaneously. Even though his men had instructions to fire only at the enemy’s web, from their angle beneath the
Mistshark
there was no way to absolutely guarantee that the blasts would miss the ship itself, but his crews performed well. The ventral web burst into flame and began drooping and falling as multiple blasts struck it. A pair of stray shots went past the web and crashed against the
Mistshark
’s active shroud, and were harmlessly absorbed as a sudden sphere of greenish light surrounded the airship.

Grimm could all but feel the shock and dismay of the enemy crew. He did not blame them. For an airship to pursue a wounded foe with such perfect precision from within the misty veil of the mezzosphere was a feat so improbable as to approach impossibility.

But more vitally, he knew that even now, the
Mistshark
’s gunners would be frantically depressing the snouts of their weapons to fire down at
Predator
the instant their pilot rocked the ship enough to give them a clean shot.