The Aeronaut's Windlass (80 page)

“Without the ability to dive, I can’t,” Grimm said. “I’ll keep raking her web, but eventually, probably within the next half hour, she’s going to take down enough of ours to overhaul us and pound us to bits.”

“I . . . see . . .” Gwen said. She swallowed. “I don’t suppose her captain will give up?”

“Why would he?” Grimm asked. His teeth showed in a sudden, feral smile. “He knows it as well as I do, after all. Barring an act of fortune on our behalf, the outcome of this chase is inevitable.”

“Oh,” Gwen said. “You have a plan of some sort, then.”

“Of sorts,” Grimm said. He put a hand on the rail as the ship rocked wildly to the side again, and more web was chewed away by the heat of a blast. A distant boom marked the detonation of a shot from
Predator
’s lone stern cannon.

Gwen frowned, and considered his words for a moment. “Captain Grimm,” she said. “You knew escape was nearly hopeless from the beginning.”

“Yes.”

“Then if your goal was simply to escape, and remaining within sight of
Itasca
was certain death, it follows that risking a dive was our most sensible option. Granted the ship may not have been able to take the strain, but it seems even the dire risk of that offers better odds for survival than this chase.”

Grimm nodded again. “Precisely true.”

Gwen frowned at him. “A gambit, then?”

“We’ve been marking our path with signal rockets since we left Spire Albion. Currently, we are following our original course back toward the Spire. If our signals have been spotted, and if any ships of the Fleet have elected to follow us, we may have support—and if so, we may be able to take
Itasca
.”

“There are a great many ‘if’s in that statement, Captain,” Gwen noted.

“Yes.”

“You are risking everyone’s life in an effort to take a single enemy ship.”

Grimm arched an eyebrow, and his manner became intent. “Not just a ship. A
storied
enemy ship, Miss Lancaster. Whether or not official statements have been made, we are now at war with Spire Aurora—a war that they are winning, handily, given the damage they’ve inflicted to the Landing shipyards.”

“And you believe the loss of a single ship will counter that sort of blow?”

“Objectively, no,” Grimm said. “But wars are not simply about objective measurements. They are about will, Miss Lancaster, about belief. The disruption the Aurorans will cause to our economy will not be remotely equal to the loss of any single ship—but if we can counter by taking down a ship like
Itasca
, we might reduce entirely the damage done to the fighting spirit of all of Albion. It is
vital
that we not be made to seem wholly helpless in the opening moments of the war. Once a nation ceases to believe that they can win a war, that war is lost.”

Gwen frowned. “And . . . you’re willing to risk the lives of your crew on such a prospect.”

“And yours, miss,” he said quietly.

“On the chance that a friendly ship
might
have seen your signal rockets.”

“It is less a gambit than a throw of the dice,” Grimm said. He had turned back to watch ahead of the ship, rocking easily as Kettle took her through another evasive maneuver. “But they are
my
dice.”

“What if
Itasca
breaks off? Surely she knows you are running toward Albion, toward our Fleet.”

Grimm tilted his head, as if he had never considered the question before. “Hmm. Then I suppose we return home with minor damage, easily repaired. But she won’t.”

“Why not?”

“Her captain was sent out to bring
Predator
down last month, to make a statement. He missed us. A captain put in command of a ship like
Itasca
will be professional, brilliant, ambitious, and hungry, miss. He won’t want to go home without feathering his cap with
Predator
’s wreckage.”

There was a sharp whistle from below, and a moment later the bridge speaking tube rattled with a tinny voice. “Bridge, ventral lookout!”

Captain Grimm turned to the speaking tube. “Bridge here, proceed.”

“Contact, Skipper!” came an aeronaut’s excited voice. “Five miles dead ahead of us, down at the cloudline. Skip, I think it’s
Glorious
! She’s descended into the mist and is ready to pop up.”

“Hah!” Grimm said, smiling fiercely. “Good eyes, Mister MacCauley. Mister Kettle, when?”

Kettle squinted ahead of them and then glanced back at
Itasca
, taking
Predator
through another lateral slalom as he considered the question. “Start a gradual descent now, Skipper,” Kettle said. “They’ll build up speed and momentum on us. They’ll close the range, but it’ll keep their eyes on us and make it that much harder for them to pull out when they spot
Glorious
.”

Grimm nodded sharply and folded his gloved hands behind his back. “Concur. Proceed.”

Kettle nodded and, after his next evasive maneuver, put the ship on a downward angle that made Gwen’s stomach rather unsettled, as the whole of the sky seemed to open up from the unfettered vista offered from the ship’s bridge.

“Glorious,”
Gwen said, fighting back flutters in her stomach. “That’s Commodore Rook’s ship, is it not?”

“Yes,” Grimm said in a severely polite, rigidly neutral tone. “I believe it is.”

“Can’t believe we’re polishing the apple he’s about to pick,” Kettle muttered.

“Now, now, Mister Kettle,” Grimm said. “There’s a very great deal of angry
Itasca
behind us. I am well contented to have help from any ship in the Fleet, under the circumstances.”

Kettle muttered something darkly beneath his breath, and Gwen frowned at the pilot. “Captain? Is there a matter for concern here?”

That Grimm paused for a thoughtful moment before he answered spoke volumes in direct contrast to his words, Gwen thought. “Not particularly,” he said. “
Glorious
is a battlecruiser as well, equal to the task of engaging
Itasca
, and Commodore Rook has a solid, competent Fleet crew.”

“I note, sir,” Gwen said, “that you do not say that Commodore Rook is solid and competent.”

“That is not my place to judge,” Grimm replied steadily. “He has advanced quite capably through the ranks.”

Kettle snorted heavily, soaring through another arc to avoid the rapidly expanding shape of an enemy blast sphere.

“He’s a pompous, lecherous ass,” Gwen noted calmly, “devoid of the wit God in Heaven gives to a simpleton, but he has a certain ratlike cunning, I suppose. He looks pretty enough in a uniform, too.”

Grimm turned his head sharply toward her, and then away again. She could tell by the tightening in his cheek, seen in rear profile, that he was smiling. “I would not presume to contradict your opinion, Miss Lancaster,” he said.

“That’s because the skipper don’t fight battles he can’t win, Miss Gwen,” Kettle noted.

The regular thunder of enemy munitions detonating grew fractionally louder.

“Skipper,” Kettle said, a warning tone in his voice, “if
Itasca
gets any closer, there won’t be time to evade. I’ll have to start weaving. We might not make it to
Glorious
.”

Grimm turned to the speaking tube. “Engineering, bridge.”

Journeyman’s voice clattered out of the speaking tube. “Aye, Skipper?”

“If there’s anything else left in her, Mister Journeyman, we need it right now.”

“I’m stunned she hasn’t buckled on us already, Skip,” the engineer called back. “Some of these runs are being held together with bloody twine. But I’ll see what can be done. Engine room out.”

The next few moments were, Gwen thought, uniquely terrifying. There was no kind of violent action happening near her, not an enemy to be seen as anything more than a boy’s model airship, soaring in the distance behind them. There was nothing she could prepare herself to fight. Instead there was simply regular, roaring thunder and boiling fire rending the air nearby, sending gusts of hot, ozone-scented air across the deck of
Predator
, promising a sudden and violent death. The ship rocked in increasingly severe evasive maneuvers, each necessary to preserve her life, yet each also allowing the enemy to inch nearer.

She thought she might go mad with the unnerving contrasts of the brilliant sunlight, the crisp, chill breeze in the air, and the thundering violence of aerial battle. It made her feel utterly helpless.

Because, she realized, she was. There was absolutely nothing she could do to save herself from sharing whatever fate
Predator
met, apart from throwing herself over the rail at once. She had no training, no instinct, no knowledge that would help her survive in this circumstance. Her fate was, she realized, entirely in the hands of another person.

Captain Grimm stood steady in his place on the bridge, hands folded behind his back, his safety lines tight and neat, the very image of what an airship captain was supposed to be, holding all their lives in his hands, and doing it without bowing beneath the burden or complaining of the weight.

It was a form of courage that Gwen had never considered before.

There was no way in Heaven or on Earth that this man was a coward who deserved to be cast from the Fleet, whatever the records may have said.

Gwen’s breath suddenly caught in her throat. In the past several moments,
Predator
had sailed down near to the misty mezzosphere, with
Itasca
gaining on her the entire while. There, ahead of them in the mist, she had spotted the shadowy form of
Glorious
, ready to burst forth into the teeth of the enemy.

“Let’s not stand in Commodore Rook’s way. Prepare for evasive ascension, Mister Kettle,” Grimm noted, his voice entirely calm. “Steady. Steady . . .”

An endless second passed.

And
Predator
’s luck ran out.

A burning sphere from
Itasca
’s bow gun exploded exactly amidst her port-side web, sending the entire thing up in flames in a single, violently blazing sheet of burning ethersilk.

The reaction of the ship was immediate. She slowed, throwing Gwen forward against the pull of the safety lines that strained to hold her in place, the heavy leather belt around her midsection pinching hard against her flesh, cutting into her. The ship slewed heavily to starboard, pulled off balance by the preponderance of functioning web on that side, her timbers groaning and creaking at the sudden shift of forces.

Gwen actually saw one of the runs to one of the port-side trim crystals fail in a shower of sparks, finally collapsing under the strain of hard use without the stabilization of solidly established systems to support it. The port side of the ship abruptly dropped a good two feet, bang, jarring Gwen and driving her brutally to one knee on the deck. Pain flared up her leg.

Grimm was thrown to his knees on the deck as well, but he never lost concentration on the moment, his voice rising to a bellow. “Evasive ascension now, Mister Kettle! Reef the starboard web! Kettle, wheel her around to bring our starboard array into position to support
Glorious
!”

Kettle, held steady by the braces of the pilot’s position, clenched his teeth and wrenched
Predator
into a sudden, lopsided climb, even as the ship lost more velocity, allowing for
Itasca
to rush in for a killing stroke—

—just as
Glorious
came surging up from the mezzosphere, her broadside to
Itasca
, firing her thirty cannon in rapid, successive, howling salvos of ten guns each.

The noise was too loud, the light simply too bright to be believed. Gwen found herself lifting her hands toward her eyes and ears and face as thunder and lightning pounded against them.
Predator
whirled with drunken grace around her vertical axis, until her own more slender but still deadly broadside came to bear on the enemy ship, and opened up in howling thunder.

Itasca
vanished behind a wall of flame and deafening sound and roiling smoke. It seemed incredible to Gwen that any ship could do anything but be obliterated by such an outpouring of power.

But
Itasca
did.

The ship came sailing gracefully through the thunder and fire, her web blazing like an enormous halo all around her, her energy shroud glowing more brightly than a thousand lumin crystals. Some of the blasts had gotten through, and her prow had been smashed and warped out of shape as if some titan had taken an enormous sledgehammer to her, and two of the three cannon in her bow gunnery deck had been reduced to smoldering ruin, but the vessel was in one piece, and already slewing her stern around with more grace than any ship so large should possess, even as she ascended.

Glorious
’s salvo fire smashed against
Itasca
’s shroud, but as the ship rotated she brought fresh, undamaged portions of her protective sphere to bear against the fire, shrugging off the blows like a veteran brawler. Within a few breaths she had brought her own port broadside to bear, and it fired in a single titanic salvo amidships on
Glorious
.

Glorious
’s shroud, overloaded at the relatively smaller point of impact, gave her less protection than
Itasca
’s had. Armor rang and rent and screamed as cannon tore
Glorious
’s flank, wiping away half a dozen of her guns and smashing one of her three port-side mastworks. Secondary explosions, probably from one of the cannon, blew a hole in her guts from inside the armor, sending splinters of shattered deck and planking spinning and howling throughout the nearby compartments.

But
Itasca
wasn’t finished. Rather than slowing, she kept rushing ahead, and her sharp angle of ascension carried her just over the top of
Glorious
’s glowing shroud.
Itasca
managed the roll of a much lighter ship as she went, and brought her starboard broadside to bear, aiming down at
Glorious
’s deck from point-blank range. She fired in titanic fury, and there was only so much that shroud and armor alike could do at such a range, from that relatively vulnerable angle.