Gracchi, acting more aggressively, had been launching both Sean and Richard ever since they had crossed the line, and yesterday the result had been Sean’s near death and the loss of a plane.
In the darkness, Richard went forward, stepping aside as half a dozen foretop men raced past, leaping onto the rigging and scrambling aloft into the night. Strange, he was a pilot, but the thought of dangling two hundred feet up, straddling a yardarm in the darkness, was absolutely terrifying to him. Most of the crew thought him mad for being a flyer. He thought them mad for going aloft. They were utterly without fear and on a bet would dance a jig atop the tallest mast.
As he approached his airship, its faint outline was visible in the starlight of the Great Wheel overhead. The frame was covered with canvas, the wings folded back. His launch crew of four came up, reported, and within seconds were at work. At times the drill seemed a futile gesture. Gunners at least fired blanks on a regular basis and even engaged in some live target practice; a barrel tossed overboard and then shot at from a thousand yards out, the crew coming the closest getting an extra ration of vodka.
There were competitions as well between the mast crews for speed of taking canvas in and spreading it. Even the engineering crew had the satisfaction of racing to bring the boilers up to steam and, on rare occasions, especially when they were coming back into port and could waste the preciously hoarded fuel, of unleashing the pent-up steam and bringing the great cruiser up to flank speed.
But for the men of the aerosteamer crew, launch and recovery seamen Bugarin, Yashima, Zhin, and Alexandrovich, the drill was always the same. Pull off the canvas cover, set the wings, then set the burners for the caloric hot-air engine, check steam power to the catapult, but don’t open the line. Every pound of steam was precious and filling the two hundred feet of hose from the boilers was a waste of energy if there was no launch. Then, if given the order to actually launch, pour the five-gallon glass jugs filled with sulphuric acid into the lead-lined vat containing zinc shavings and wait the fifteen minutes for the resulting hydrogen to fill the midships gas bags.
The last two steps were merely simulated and had never actually been done as part of a battle drill. The men had been delighted with the activity of the previous three days, but the crash had dampened their enthusiasm and they expected tonight to be another drill with no results.
Alexi arrived first. He was always enthusiastic, and Richard already knew his words of greeting.
“Well, sire, perhaps this time we fly!”
Alexi’s family had lived in the great woods north of Suzdal, and despite^ having moved over twenty years ago to the Republic, he had grown up accustomed to the old way of address.
“Perhaps, Alexi, something is up.”
“What, sire?”
Cromwell pointed to the southeast, and Alexi, with his catlike eyes, immediately spotted the flickering glow on the horizon, which Richard could now just barely discern.
“Ahh, a fire at sea? Perhaps there’ll be some fun then for us.”
Bugarin, Yashima, and Zhin joined them, gossiping amongst themselves as they cleared the tarpaulin and struggled to swing the wings forward. Richard checked carefully as the team set the locking pins and fastened the bi-level wings into place. Pins not properly set were the most common kind of accidents. The wing would snap back at launch, and the plane would dive straight down. Their comrades on the starboard-side catapult stood around glumly. There was nothing to do now that their plane was gone. Cromwell’s command leveled a few good-natured jibes about their now being drafted to go shovel coal.
The rest of the ship was a flurry of activity. The bow gunner crew was clearing the tarps from the twin-mounted steam gatling guns, uncasing the ammunition drums and slapping them into place. Fire crews connected hoses to pumps and tore the lids off buckets of sand hung from the railings.
The single turret forward, containing a massive fourteen-inch muzzle-loading gun, slowly turned, steam wheezing from the vent ports. From inside, Richard could hear the gunnery master shouting orders, preparing the weapon to be loaded if the captain should decide to go to full alert. The problem was that once loaded, the gun could not be unloaded other than by firing it, and ammunition was too expensive to waste whenever an alert was sounded.
Below, on the main fighting deck, Richard could hear firing ports on the starboard and port side being cleared. Armament below was a six-inch rifled breechloader forward, and another aft, with two ten-inch muzzle loaders amidships. The guns could swing to either starboard or port, then be run out and fired. Farther down, below the waterline in the forward and aft magazines, the steam hoists were tested and the first shells and powder bags loaded in, ready to be sent up through brass-lined tubes to the main gunnery deck.
Secondary guns lined the topside deck, the lighter three-inch weapons maneuvered by the muscle power of their crews.
Overhead, in the three masts, more than a hundred men swarmed, awaiting the command to take in and let out sail. If an enemy was sighted, sails would be furled. All motive power would shift to the steam engines that were still powering up as stokers tore into the coal bunkers, trundling out wheelbarrow loads of the precious black rock, upending the barrels into the open maws of the furnaces, which, with every passing second, glowed hotter and hotter. Rakers spread the hot coals out, the burning heat coiling around the hundreds of feet of piping that fed cold water through the boiler. The water flashed to steam that thundered into the pistons and hundreds of yards of piping that fed power to the turrets, gatling guns, hoists, pumps, pulleys, and Cromwell’s catapult launch.
Richard felt a rumble pass through the ship. The propellers, turning over, dug in. The command then went up for all sails to be furled.
The drill had been done a hundred times since they had set sail, less than a week after his graduation from the academy, but this time Richard could feel the tension. He could see the glow on the horizon from the main deck without aid of field glasses. It reflected off distant clouds, shimmering, then dying down, punctuated by sharp flashes. “Lieutenant Cromwell, you’re wanted on the bridge.” Richard followed the messenger, dodging around fire crews laying out buckets of sand and ammunition carriers bringing up three-inch rounds to the topside guns. Gaining the bridge ladder, he scrambled up. The deck was illuminated only by starlight, and the dim glow of the helmsman’s lamp had an unworldly feeling to it. Gracchi barely looked up at him, just a sidelong glance.
“You ready to fly, son?”
Startled, Richard did not respond.
“Well?”
“Ah, yes, sir.”
Gracchi, putting down his mug of tea, came up to Richard and placed a hand on his shoulder. “I want you to be cautious, son. Get up, use the clouds. I want you to get a good look at what is up ahead. Two things: what is burning, and who the hell is fighting. Don’t let yourself be seen, then hightail it back here before dawn.
“We’re in dangerous waters, Richard. I expect you to find out what the danger is and get back alive.”
Richard, stunned, said nothing. A night launch was rare enough. A night landing, except for some practice runs on the Inland Sea, had never been done.
To his surprise, Gracchi offered his oversize mug of tea to him. Cromwell’s knees instantly turned to jelly. Yet he was even more afraid that Gracchi would see his fear, and he struggled to still his hands. He accepted the mug and took a long drink. He detected a hint of vodka in the drink.
In the dim light he could see Gracchi smile at him in a fatherly way.
“Sorry, lad, but it’s got to be done. Get your bearing from the helmsman. We’ll hold our course steady at five knots. Don’t do anything foolish, just get a good look, then come straight back. We’ll pluck you out of the water, you can count on it.”