The Aeronaut's Windlass (72 page)

The aeronauts scrambled back into the shelter of the Spire as the cannon fire walked closer and closer. Grimm was the last one to step off of the deck, and so close was the enemy fire as he did that he could feel the force of it through the soles of his boots.

Grimm had time to turn around before, with a screaming groan, the entire shipyard began to twist and shift before what would be an inevitable fall down the obdurate height of Spire Albion to the surface. Grimm saw the level deck begin to tilt and slide, fires burning in dozens of places.
Predator
swayed helplessly in her slip.

And then the cannon fire from the
Mistshark
reached
Predator
, and Grimm’s ship, his
home
,
vanished in a deafening thundercloud of fire and blinding light.

Chapter 61

Spire Albion, Habble Landing Shipyard, AMS
Predator

G
wen frantically hooked up leads to the main engineering panel, one after another, working as rapidly as she could. She lay on her back beneath the control panel, working with her arms stretched out, while around her the engineering spaces became a shouting, noisome scene of frenetic activity.

“Curse your miserable guts, get that breaker hooked up!” Journeyman bellowed. “You, there, I will personally kick you to the surface if you don’t bring that resistor online!”

“Main power leads up!” someone shouted.

“Leads to lift crystal up!” called someone else.

“Blast you all to the surface,” Journeyman screamed. “Get back from the core! I’m engaging the cage in ten seconds.”

“The leads aren’t up,” Gwen growled at the engineer beneath her breath.

“They’d better be,” Journeyman said. “Nine! Eight! Seven!”

Gwen frantically made her fingers fly even faster. “I can only do it so fast.”

“Better be fast enough,” Journeyman said. “Five! Four! Three! Two!”

Gwen slipped the last pair of lines into place and slapped the clamp down over them.

“One! Powering the core!” Journeyman adjusted the controls and the two halves of the power core’s petallike Haslett cage gracefully slid up and around the core, settling into their spherical configuration.
Predator
’s core crystal came to life with a deep and musical hum, and arcs of greenish energy began to flicker rapidly across the interior of the Haslett cage. Almost at once, the temperature in the room jumped by several degrees.

“Is that it?” Gwen said. “Did we do it?”

“Power core’s up,” Journeyman growled. “Soon as she’s warmed up and ready, we get to find out if there are any flaws in any of these new crystals.”

Gwen sniffed and lifted her chin. “Every crystal is thoroughly inspected and tested at the Lancaster Vattery. They’re fine.”

Just then there was a scream of a discharging etheric cannon, almost instantly followed by roaring thunder.

“God in Heaven, they’ve begun,” Journeyman breathed. “General quarters! Strap up, boys! Strap up!”

Men began rushing about the cabin, frantically passing out complex bundles of leather straps from storage lockers on the walls. One of them tossed a bundle of straps to Journeyman, and a second to Gwen. “What on earth is this?” Gwen asked.

“Battle harness,” Journeyman said. “Strap it on.”

Gwen lifted the collection of straps dubiously. “I’m sorry?”

Journeyman’s hands flew with the expertise of long, long practice, and his own ball of mysterious strapping was somehow transformed into a collection of belts that crisscrossed his torso and wrapped his waist. Each strap was liberally festooned with copper-clad steel rings. Journeyman then shook out a strap with clips on either end. He clipped one of them to a ring at his waist. He clipped a second line opposite, and a third in the center of his body at the waistline.

Howling cannon cried out again. This time there was a sound so enormous that Gwen simply could not believe that it happened. It shook the deck beneath her feet, made her stagger, slapped against her like an unseen wind, and then there was a vast grinding, crunching noise that followed it for almost half a minute.

“What on earth was that?” Gwen asked, her breath coming short.

Journeyman grimaced, and looked shaken himself. He began arranging Gwen’s harness around her. “One of those shots must have hit a power core farther down the shipyard, probably that little Piker ship at the far end.”

“How could you know that?”

“We’re still here,” the engineer answered. “If it had taken one of the bigger ships, it would have smeared us all over the side of the Spire.” He thumped Gwen on the shoulder to get her to turn around, then grunted, adjusted a belt, and started clipping lines to her waist. “Three lines,” he said. “Keep them hooked up to a securing ring at all times. You don’t want to be standing there flat-footed when we drop a few hundred feet abruptly. Bounce that pretty head off the ceiling and break your skinny neck, likely as not.”

Gwen looked around and saw that the engineers were all at their various stations, their lines hooked up to rings heavily seeded along the walls and duty stations. She watched as Journeyman began hooking up to the main panel, and followed suit.

He eyed her, grunted, and said, “Just you stay out of my way.”

“I wouldn’t dream otherwise,” Gwen assured him.

“All right, boys!” Journeyman called.

Etheric cannon howled again.

The chief engineer clenched his jaw and said, “Prepare to engage lift and trim crystals on my mark!”

“Ready!” called engineers in quick sequence from several stations.

“Wait!” Gwen shouted. “No! Belay that!” She paused and frowned at Journeyman. “That’s the proper term, correct? Belay that?”

Journeyman scowled at her. “You are exactly in my way.”

Gwen shook her head impatiently. “If
Predator
suddenly rises up out of her slip,
right here
under the enemy guns, what do you think will happen? How will they react?”

Journeyman stared at her for a second and then scowled furiously. “Dammit, dammit.
Mistshark
doesn’t have armor. She’ll blow us to the surface for fear that we’ll do the same to her if we can bring our guns to bear.”

“Yes,” Gwen said. “We can’t take off yet. We have to sit here and not be a threat to them.”

Cannon howls. Another vast sound of thunder, and a bone-deep groan that accompanied a sudden tilt of several degrees in the deck.

Everyone in the engineering compartment looked around wildly, their eyes surrounded by white. “God in Heaven,” one of the men breathed. “They’re shooting the shipyard out from under us.”

Journeyman grimaced. “We got no pilot aboard her. We got no crew to run out her web so she can maneuver.”

“Can we fight?”

“We got no gun crews! They’re all off with the skipper! And we got no
time
for this!”

The shipyard shook again, enormous groaning sounds running through the air and making the deck of
Predator
vibrate as she rocked back and forth, nearly throwing Gwen from her feet. “Ungh! What can we do?”

“Go up and down,” Journeyman shot back. “Down’ll be real easy.”

Cannon howled again, and the roaring impact was even closer. The enemy, Gwen realized, was walking his shots toward
Predator
.

“Core’s hot, Chief!” called one of the engineers.

Journeyman grunted and started manipulating the Haslett cage controls. “Going to configure our shroud to cover our top half a bit thicker. Might give us an edge.” He turned his head. “Trim and lift crews, stand by. We’re going to start off with a little dive.”

Every head in the room whipped around to stare at Journeyman.

“Dive protocol, you rot-riddled whoremongers!” Journeyman bellowed.

“I take it a dive is dangerous?” Gwen asked in a mild tone.

“With no pilot, more like suicidal,” Journeyman said conversationally. “No pilot to steer, we’re likely to smash up against the side of the Spire.”

“What happens if we do that?”

“We go into a spin all the way down, lift crystals or not. If we’re lucky, the ship breaks up and we die on impact.”

“Lucky?” Gwen asked.

“Better that than to wind up on the surface on foot, with a smashed ship around us.”

Gwen shuddered. “I see what you—”

Etheric cannon howled again.

Predator
’s core crystal flared with blinding light, and the ship lurched as if it had been struck with an enormous hammer. Thunder roared, a thing more felt than heard, and Gwen was nearly hurled from her feet despite the security straps. There was a horrible instant of complete stillness—

—and then the bottom of the world dropped out and Gwen felt her feet lift up off of the deck. There were several sharp cries and screams, until Journeyman bellowed, “Be quiet, you idiots!” He was leaning back, his feet braced on the deck, his weight secured by the taut lifelines. His expression looked precisely as maladjusted as it did when he was
not
plunging helplessly to his death, Gwen noted.

“Lift,” Journeyman bellowed, “give us two percent! We have to fall slower than that shipyard debris, let it get clear of us before we stabilize!”

“Two percent, aye!” shouted another engineer.

Gwen felt her heels sink back onto the floor again, and she grasped a ring on the panel with one hand, holding on until her knuckles were white.

“Stand by!” Journeyman bellowed. Gwen heard him tapping his foot hard against the deck in steady rhythm—counting seconds, she realized.

She shook her head at this display of cool and collected thinking, of single-minded focus amidst madness—and as she did, she noticed a single loose wire sprang out from the control panel.

Gwen had no time for thought. Those wires conducted current from the Haslett cage to the ship’s systems. If that wire was one of the ones running to the altitude crystal or one of the ship’s trim crystals, it would not receive power when the others did, and the results could be disastrous.

Gwen unclipped one of her safety lines and lunged for the panel, all but throwing herself onto her back.

“Three!” Journeyman bellowed.

Gwen seized the loose wire.

“Two!” Journeyman shouted.

She spotted the open socket and rapidly slid the wire up into place—the starboard trim crystals. If she didn’t get the system online, when the lift engineer sent power to the crystal array, the ship would begin to spin violently on its long axis and fly out of control, with disastrous, probably fatal results.

She fumbled with the wire, desperate with haste, knowing even as she did that she was too late.

“One!” Journeyman called, as his hands flew over the power switches, opening channels of current from the core. “Engage the lift array!”

Chapter 62