The Aeronaut's Windlass (79 page)

AMS
Predator

G
wen felt rather ridiculous while moving from the infirmary to the bridge. Procedure aboard a ship engaged in combat action was for every crewman to keep at least one and preferably two safety lines secured to contact points at all times. Fixing the heavy metal clips to the secure rings was not the effortless task that the crew of
Predator
made it look like. Fortunately, runner bars stretching along the length of the deck and some of the internal hallways made the task simpler, if not easy, but nonetheless it took her several minutes to travel no more than eighty feet.

She reached the bridge just as Commander Creedy began bellowing orders to the ship’s crew, and the deck tilted slightly beneath her feet as
Predator
began to bank into a turn.

She was about to climb the steep staircase up to the bridge when the captain of the immobilized
Mistshark
gripped the handrails and simply slid down them, landing effortlessly on the deck and nearly bowling Gwen over in the process.

The tall woman gave her an impatient glance, took in the grease and grime on her clothes, and said, “Good God in Heaven, is Journeyman allowing women into his engine room now? What is happening to the world?”

“Excuse me,” Gwen said.

“I suppose,” the woman said, and moved at a gliding run down the deck, seemingly uncaring of the way the ship had begun to tilt and shudder, to where a launch had been tied up to
Predator
’s flank. She vaulted the rail to the launch, nodding to the two rough-looking men crewing it, then began untying the mooring lines.

Gwen blinked at this behavior. Was the woman not effectively a captive? Was she escaping? Why on earth was no one putting a stop to it?

“Halt!” Gwen said, in what she hoped was an authoritative tone. She began to lift her gauntlet to take aim at the escapee, then remembered as she raised her arm that she was not wearing her gauntlet, having spent most of the last day working with components of the ship’s engines. Rather than abort the gesture entirely, which she felt would have looked weak and indecisive, she pointed a stern finger instead and said, “You there! Halt!”

The enemy captain looked up at her and burst out in a hearty belly laugh. Then she hauled against a lever that slowly kicked the launch out away from
Predator.
The launch began to fall behind
Predator
at once, since she wasn’t being driven by any kind of etheric sail. Before the launch fell out of sight astern, the enemy captain called, “You’ve bigger problems than me now, girl!”

And then the launch fell out of sight behind them.

Gwen chewed on her lip for a second, then turned and laboriously ascended to the bridge.

By the time she got there,
Predator
was fully under way, sailing swiftly into the morning sun, so that she had to squint against its brilliance as she secured her safety lines near where Captain Grimm stood by the pilot’s stand.

“Good morning, Miss Lancaster,” Grimm said. “What can I do for you?”

“That woman, the captain of the enemy ship,” Gwen said. “Did you let her go free?”

“Yes,” Grimm said. A muscle twitched in his jawline.

“Why on earth would you do that?” she asked.

“I saw no point in her dy—” He paused for a moment, adjusted his peaked cap carefully, and then said, “I saw no point in giving her an opportunity to distract us during a combat action.”

Gwen felt her eyes widen. “Oh, dear. Is that what we’re doing?”

“Odds seem excellent,” Grimm said. “Put your goggles on, Miss Lancaster.”

Gwen blinked at him, then remembered and cursed herself for looking like an idiot who had never traveled by airship before. Leaving one’s eyes unshielded at this altitude was an invitation to any number of etheric mental disorders, as well as to eventual blindness. She settled her tinted goggles into positon. “I’m afraid I don’t understand. Why not keep her?”

“If I had, her ship, seeing help on the way, would certainly have unlimbered her guns and engaged us. We could likely have destroyed her, but doing so would have cost us precious time in delay, and we would have been unlikely to do it with our shroud intact.” The captain glanced toward the rear of the ship and said, “We need every bit of power we have to keep us moving and to fuel the shroud if we are to have a chance of survival. Releasing Captain Ransom was an implicit truce, and the least evil option available to me.”

“I see,” Gwen said. “Am I interfering with the ship’s operation by being here?”

Again he began a quick reply, and again restrained himself for a few seconds before answering. “Not at present,” he said. “Currently we are under way. It remains to be seen whether we can escape
Itasca
.”

“Ah,” Gwen said. “I thought you should know, Captain, that Master Ferus’s gear has been returned to him. He and Miss Folly are in the infirmary now.”

Grimm arched a brow and turned fully to her for the first time since she’d arrived on the bridge. “Will he be able to help my men?”

“He said he would try,” Gwen said. She gave her head a little shake. “The poor old man looked awful.”

“He’s had a difficult time of it the past few hours,” Grimm answered. He flipped down the telescoptic mounted on his goggles and peered past Gwen for several seconds before he grimaced and said, “They’re breaking out their chase guns.”

Kettle turned his head and squinted back at the shape of an airship far astern.
Itasca
, Gwen assumed. “From there?” the pilot said, his tone annoyed. “They must have the new-model bow guns.”

“So much for that advantage,” Grimm said.

“Are we going to give battle, then, Captain?” Gwen asked.

“Not for very long,” Kettle said darkly from his control station.

“
Itasca
is a battlecruiser, Miss Lancaster,” Grimm said, by way of explanation. “She’s a great deal larger and more heavily armed and armored than
Predator
. We cannot realistically survive a pitched battle with her.”

“Then we are running from her?” Gwen asked.

“We’re trying,” Kettle said.

“I know nothing of aerial combat, Captain,” Gwen said. “But . . . would it not be wise to descend into the mist and avoid action that way?”

“Under most circumstances, Miss Gwen, that is exactly what I would do,” Grimm answered.

Gwen looked over the side of the ship. “And yet we seem to be ascending.”

Grimm nodded. “
Itasca
was fully under way by the time we spotted her, while we were standing still. It was necessary for us to open as much distance as possible as quickly as possible, and we’re lighter than
Itasca
. All that armor plate weighs her down. It takes
Predator
relatively less energy to ascend, so to keep pace with us, she has to reduce power from her other systems to maintain an ascension as she moves forward.”

“By running up as well as away,
Predator
was quicker off the mark?” Gwen asked.

Grimm nodded in approval. “Just so. Doing so kept
Itasca
from catching up to us and overwhelming us immediately.”

“And once you’re sure we’re out of her cannon range, you’ll dive back down?” Gwen asked.

“Normally, yes,” Grimm said with a grimace. “But Journeyman hasn’t finished putting the ship back together. She’s not running at her best, and she’s not able to handle a combat dive yet. We could descend slowly, but if we do so,
Itasca
will be able to use her weight and momentum to make up distance on us and bring us within range of her guns.”

“Then what are we going to do?” Gwen asked.

“Run like hell and pray,” Kettle said.

Grimm stiffened suddenly and said, “She’s firing her chasers. Evasive starboard.”

Gwen turned to look behind them. There was a bright flash of scarlet-and-white light from the pursuing ship, and a brilliant little pinpoint like a tiny star appeared and grew swiftly, unsettlingly larger. Even as she saw that, the ship heaved beneath them as Kettle took her into a swift bank, then settled her down again almost immediately onto her original course. Gwen’s stomach flopped and wobbled, and despite her secured safety lines, she was all but thrown from her feet.

She could not take her eyes from the incoming fire as she did. It flashed across the distance between the two ships in no more than a breath, growing and growing as it came. The sphere of energy detonated perhaps fifty yards ahead of the ship and far off to their port side, erupting into a cloud of pure fire, roiling flame dozens of yards across. The explosion was loud enough to make the planking of the deck vibrate. Gwen felt herself flinch from both the sound and the intensity of the light. “God in Heaven,” she breathed. “What happens if that hits us?”

“We’re at the edge of her range,” Grimm replied. “When the energy of the blast is that dispersed, our shroud is best able to absorb it.
Predator
can take numerous direct hits from this distance.”

“But our web isn’t so lucky,” Kettle said.

“I don’t understand,” Gwen said.

“Incoming fire,” Grimm said again. “Evasive port.”

Once more Gwen’s stomach lurched as Kettle wove in the opposite direction for a few breathless seconds, then trimmed
Predator
neatly. Again a thundercloud of fire burst to one side of the ship—but this time there were flickers of light at the very edge of the translucent cobwebs of her starboard ethersilk web.

“As you can see,” Grimm said, “our ethersilk web extends beyond the protection offered by
Predator
’s energy shroud. The web is vulnerable to incoming fire.”

“Could you not shorten it to bring it within the shroud’s protection?” Gwen asked. “Would that not protect the web?”

“And reduce our velocity proportionately as a result,” Grimm replied. “We’d slow to a crawl. Incoming. Evasive ascension.”

Gwen was all but flung down to the deck as
Predator
abruptly climbed. She felt certain that her stomach was doing its best to share her skull with her brains before Kettle leveled out again. She found herself gripping the railing desperately to maintain her footing. This time the blast exploded a shade farther ahead of the ship, if a good deal below. Which meant that
Itasca
was closer to
Predator
than she had been for the previous shot. Which meant . . .

“Then that’s why
Itasca
is shooting at us,” Gwen said. “She’s trying to burn away enough of our web to slow us down, so she can kill us.”

“We call it raking the web, Miss Gwen,” Grimm said politely. “And that is exactly what she means to do. We can keep the distance open by continuing to ascend, force her to run uphill after us for a time.”

“Why?” Gwen asked. “What happens then?”

“We run out of up,” Kettle said with a grim chortle. “Go up too far, and the air is too thin to breathe.”

Gwen felt a little short of breath already. “Then what hope have we?”

“
Itasca
is overpowered, even for her size,” Grimm said. “She’s running three core crystals at maximum to keep this pace with us—and she’ll be running her steam turbine all-out too. That means her systems are more complex, more prone to overheating, component failure, and other technical problems.”

“She can sprint as fast as we can,” Kettle clarified. “But we can keep up this pace for days at a time. It’s what we’re made to do.”

Grimm nodded. “The longer we can keep this race going, the more likely something is to give on
Itasca
. Incoming, evasive starboard.”

Kettle wove the ship to one side, and this time
Itasca
’s bow gun claimed a small portion of
Predator
’s web on the port side.

“Can’t you duck any further to one side?” Gwen asked.

“The more we weave side to side while
Itasca
runs in a straight line, the more distance she makes up on us,” Grimm said. “Mister Kettle knows his business.”

“Unfortunately,” Kettle said sourly. “We don’t get lucky, we’re going to get to knock off work before lunch, Skip.”

“I’ll accept luck if we can find any,” Grimm acknowledged. “But be of good hope, Mister Kettle.
Itasca
’s web is vulnerable too. She can’t dodge. And she should just about be within range.” He turned to a speaking tube and called out, “Stern gunnery deck, bridge.”

Creedy’s voice came back out of the speaking tube, tinny and distant. “Stern guns, aye.”

“Rake her web, XO,” Grimm said. “Fire at will.”

“Fire at will, aye,” Creedy said.

A second later there was a howl of discharging cannon, and a blue-white sphere of fire of their own went hurtling back toward the Auroran ship. The explosion looked tiny in the distance, and there was an odd, long delay before its cough of distant thunder caught up with
Predator
. Gwen noted a faint shimmer in the air, and realized that she was looking at a large section of ethersilk web being burned away.

“Excellent shooting, Creedy,” Grimm called into the speaking tube, even as Kettle threw the ship into another sharp ascension to avoid fire. “Pour it on.”

“Aye, sir!” came Creedy’s voice. “Thank you, sir!”

“Why,” Gwen said, “if we keep shooting like that, we’ll lose her in no time.”

“Except she hangs a lot more web than we do, miss,” Kettle said. “She keeps a lot more web in her reels than
Predator
can. And she’s got three times the chase armament we do.”

Gwen felt somewhat indignant at these facts. “Well. That hardly seems fair.”

Captain Grimm chuckled beneath his breath. “
Itasca
’s made for exactly this kind of work,” he said.

“Then how will you defeat her?” Gwen asked.

Grimm held on as Kettle wove through another evasive maneuver. The two aeronauts took it in stride, evidently staying upright through an act of sheer, unconscious will. Gwen felt as though her stomach had decided to depart her body for warmer climes, and she desperately struggled to keep from retching in front of the captain and Mister Kettle.