Nathaniel’s knees turned to water at the sight. The Terebellum was too far away to hear the screams of the falling, but he heard them in his head, memories of his last minutes on the Pollux. They made his ears ring. The weakness didn’t last. Rage, with a hard thirst for revenge, took its place, incinerating every fear and hesitation. No one aboard this ship would die like that. Not the crewmen, not him, not Nettie, and most definitely not Lenore.
Nettie’s voice crackled down the receiver tubes issuing orders. A burst of activity followed her commands. Nathaniel didn’t wait for her to request his help. He bolted for the ship’s center, bypassing the ladder connected to the B deck where the keel-based weapons platform was located. The newly made spirits of crewmen from the other ships flowed behind and in front of him, their ethereal chorus firing the already hot gehenna inside him and making his armor sizzle and smoke.
“Shred them, gunner. Destroy every last one.”
A junior gunner standing by the turret’s entrance gaped at him. Nathaniel halted in front of him. “Where’s the control room speaker tube?” The gunner pointed to a tube attached to a girder.
Nettie’s long pause traveled the entire length of the tube when Nathaniel told her “Captain Widderschynnes, this is the Guardian requesting permission to enter and man the weapons platform.”
He waited, muscles thrumming in anticipation of seating himself behind the pair of Dahlgren guns to blast away at the horrifics lurking in the rift.
“Permission granted.” Nettie’s voice held an odd note—of both pride and a touch of fear. Despite her assurances that he’d have to be the one to bell the cat, she did it for him. “Nathaniel Gordon, if you die again, I will take your sorry carcass and hang it from my ship’s shield spike!”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Lenore clutched at one of the bed frames bolted to girders in the sick bay as the floor beneath her feet vibrated from the cannon fire the Terebellum spewed into the Redan from her gunnery deck and the rotating turret housed in the weapons platform under the keel.
“Nathaniel Gordon, if you die again...”
The shock of Nettie’s statement booming across the entire length of the airship made her reel.
Nettie had lost her mind. Too many years fighting in the Redan had done this to her, made her see ghosts of loved ones aboard her ship. Lenore was certain of it. Nathaniel Gordon had died five years earlier. No one died twice, not even him.
It can’t be. It can’t be. Horror battled with hope inside her
Everyone knew the renegade scientist-doctor who called himself Harvel had created seven Guardians—men brought back from the brink of death by unnatural experiments, made inhuman and forever changed.
The Guardian of Highgate had fascinated her from the first moment she met him. And he looked nothing at all like her lost Nathaniel.
He tipped his imaginary hat just like Nathaniel. He’d called her Lenore when he thought her unconscious or too far away from him to hear.
He told her he once served aboard an airship.
He recited Tennyson right before he kissed her and brought her numb spirit back to life.
Anyone could chalk those things up to coincidences or her seeing and hearing what she wanted to hear, a woman still grieving for her lost lover. She might have even agreed except for one thing.
“Do I know you?”
She’d asked the question by her father’s grave, confused why such a thing might fall from her lips when logic dictated that acquaintance with a Guardian was an event none would forget. Lenore’s soul had instantly recognized what her eyes had not.
Oh God, Nathaniel. He’d come back to her—resurrected by methods she could only imagine and that made her shudder. Now he courted death again, housed in a gun turret under an airship’s belly, taking aim at the abominations that had ripped him away from her.
A hard bang sounded over the thunder of artillery fire, and the ship jolted sideways. Lenore fell against one of the metal medicine cabinets. She righted herself and searched for the doctor. The impact to the ship had knocked him to the floor. He clambered to his knees before gaining his feet with the help of his white-faced assistant.
“What was that?” the other man asked in a quavering voice.
The doctor, equally pale, straightened his coat and adjusted his skewed spectacles on his nose. “I don’t know, but it can’t be good.” He gestured to the cabinet behind Lenore. “And there’s nothing we three can do about it. Kenward,” he ordered,” see to the contents in there and make sure nothing is broken or spilled.”
“Yes, sir.” She caught the key he tossed her and unlocked the cabinet doors, hoping all the bottles and vials of medicines and chloroform were intact.
Before she could begin her inspection, the sick bay door banged open and a crewman rushed in—a junior mechanic judging by his close-fitting cap, goggles and boilersuit. His gaze locked on the doctor. “Where’s Kenward?” he asked in a breathless voice, as if he’d run the length of the ship.
“Here,” she said.
He motioned frantically for her to join him and was halfway out the door already when he told her “Mr. Jupiter needs your assistance in the forecastle. We have engine trouble.”
Lenore gawked at him for a moment before glancing at the doctor who waved her out. She raced to keep up with the crewman as they flew down the gangway, up a ladder to the deck above the gasbag deck and across the hull to where an exterior shaft connecting hull to gondola allowed the mechanics access to both places during shift changes. Bless Nettie for insisting her female crew members dress like pit lasses—trousers under skirts tucked at the waist—otherwise she’d never been able to keep up.
The mechanic stopped her before the shaft’s entrance. From her place at the top, she had a good view of the gondola. Part of its housing was torn off, exposing some of the engine to the elements. She wondered if they’d been hit by either friendly fire or a horrific’s strike.
The wind blasted an icy howl up the shaft, nearly drowning the mechanic’s shout. “Do you have a cap?” He tapped his head, encased in the tight-fitting cap everyone entering an engine gondola wore. She shook her head, and he stripped his off to hand it to her. “You’ll need it,” he bellowed. “That braid of yours will get you killed down there.”
Thanks to her father, Lenore understood engine design, even if she’d never been allowed to work on a physical one. Jewelry, hair, ties; anything hanging loose in an engine gondola was dangerous. Getting hair caught guaranteed a fatal scalping.
She tucked her braid into the cap and buckled the strap under her chin. He steadied her as she got her footing on the shaft ladder and descended toward the gondola. The wind that had blown into the shaft now gusted hot and smelled of burning metal.
Artillery fire and wind howl were nothing compared to the mechanical roar of the engine in the gondola’s tight, enclosed space. Mr. Jupiter, the Terebellum’s master mechanic motioned her to where the engine’s crankshaft spun in fast rotation. The acrid metal smell was especially prevalent here.
With the noise and her cap covering her head, his shouts directly into her ear were the thinnest whispers, and she had to strain to hear.
“You know this engine’s design from your father.”
She nodded and yelled her reply. “Yes, but I have no hands-on experience.” She couldn’t imagine why the master mechanic had summoned her for help when he had a junior mechanic waiting at the top of the shaft.
He enlightened her posthaste. “One of the other ships took damage from a horrific. Sent out a shrapnel blast that tore off some of this gondola. A metal splinter lodged in a gear in the speed reduction unit and froze it up.”
Lenore inhaled sharply. These mechanics were lucky to be alive and not sliced to bloody remains. It was one small thing to be grateful for in the face of impending disaster.
She glanced around the engine toward the propeller exposed by the rip in the gondola’s side. The massive blades spun much faster than they should have. Without
the propeller speed reduction unit working, the powerplant’s rotations per minute would rise to critical failure levels. What damage a horrific didn’t manage to inflict on a ship, her engine’s torsional vibration would.
“Why is the engine still running? You’ll lose the prop if it keeps going or break the crankshaft.” Her voice was a thin echo felt more than heard. She wondered if Mr. Jupiter could read lips.
“Orders from the helm.”
He was halted from saying more by cannon blast from under the keel. The ship dipped into a steep yaw, slamming him and Lenore both against the gondola’s undamaged wall. A high unearthly shriek made Lenore cover her ears, even beneath her protective cap. Mr. Jupiter did the same, his craggy features drawn in until they were a grimacing map of rutted roads. The ship leveled and swung sharp to port. Lenore gripped the hand bar bolted to the wall to keep from losing her feet and tumbling against the engine. Jupiter held her arm in a vise grip that numbed her fingers.
“Are you well?” he shouted. She nodded. He pointed in the general direction of the exposed sky. “That’s why we’re still spinning. There’s a horrific just about on top of us.”
She nodded, understanding. Stop the engine and propeller, and they’d lose not only speed and power but maneuverability. The Terebellum’s formidable arsenal didn’t work alone. She still needed to get out of the way and to do so she needed all her engines running.
“Why do you need me?” she asked.
Mr. Jupiter raised one hand and wiggled his fingers before shouting again. “The opening to reach the splinter is too small for any of us to get in there and pry it out. We need someone with small hands who knows the engines and don’t need a lot of instruction. That’s you.”
Lenore’s stomach lurched as she turned to look at the crankshaft and gearbox, the spinning rotation of a hundred metal teeth that notched and turned tooth over tooth in constant motion. They’d stop the engine so she could dislodge and retrieve the splinter. She tried not imagine the impossible scenario of the engine somehow restarting on its own. Those teeth would chew her hand off, pulp it into a bloody hunk of crushed bone and shredded muscle. Her fingers twitched at the gruesome thought.
For one moment, she wished herself back home, safe in the parlor, drinking tepid tea and listening to her Aunt Adelaide abuse their pianoforte. She’d hated every second of it, craved adventure and freedom from the strictures of stifling society.
Be careful what you wish for.
She nodded to Mr. Jupiter. “Whenever you’re ready.”
A shout traveled down the shaft. The master mechanic slipped past her to stare up at his junior still hovering at the top of the shaft. He nodded and returned to stand next to her. “The helm’s taking the engine down now.”
“What about the horrific?”
He grinned. “Seems that bonekeeper might have made a kill shot. The monster fell back into the rift.”
Lenore closed her eyes and tried not to think of Nathaniel. All of her focus needed to stay here, in this tight, damaged, vulnerable gondola.
She and Mr. Jupiter waited several tense minutes. The engine’s noise abruptly changed, slowed and finally whirred to a stop on a mechanical exhalation. The slowing rotation hum of the propeller followed until it was just the wind and the endless boom and vibration of gun and cannon from the Terebellum and the other ships around her.
They waited even longer for the engine to cool to a temperature that wouldn’t cook her hand off her wrist. The mechanic tapped his foot impatiently. “We’re an easy target while that engine is down.”
“I’ll be quick, sir,” she said, eyeing the spot in the gearbox where the splinter jammed the gears.
She eased her hand inside. The metal was still warm, but not so much that it burned her skin. The blunt teeth scraped her knuckles, pressing shallow depressions into her arm as she reached for the shrapnel piece. Sweat poured down her torso under her clothes and trickled down her neck.
Her fingertips gripped the splinter, earning a slice across her index finger for her efforts. “Got it!” she called to the mechanic. She growled under her breath as the metal, wedged hard against the gear, refused to dislodge. “Bloody hell,” she snapped. She didn’t have all day for this. Neither did the Terebellum.
Blood from her wounded finger made the metal slippery, but with more cursing and careful joggles of the splinter first one way and then the other, she managed to pry it loose. Mr. Jupiter’s whoop of triumph when she straightened to show him her prize made her grin. No bigger than a bodkin tip on a practice arrow, the sliver had nearly caused a catastrophe. That something so small could cause such problems!
She turned the sliver over to Mr. Jupiter who pocketed it with an approving nod before returning to the shaft. This time she heard him clearly when he ordered the junior to relay the command to start up the engine again. Both he and Lenore wilted in relief when the powerplant coughed back to life and set the propeller in a proper rotation speed. He grinned and shook her hand. “Good work, lass.”
“Thank you, sir.” She might have been more elated if it weren’t for the knowledge that a man she loved and thought dead was once again playing a game of suicide on the weapons platform. But she didn’t have the luxury to worry. She climbed the shaft ladder back to the hull, returned the junior mechanic’s cap to him with a word of thanks and raced back to the sick bay.
Voices crackled over the speaking tubes from the control room, following her as she made her way to the keel corridor—Nettie’s, strong and sure, her boatswain’s equally commanding, a few stray remarks overheard behind the commands, one that made Lenore pause and clench her fists until her nails dug into her palms.
“That bonekeeper is a crackin’ good shot! Just blew away two of that horrific’s eyes!”
“Please,” she prayed—to God, to Nathaniel, to Fate, to anyone or anything who’d listen. “Give me a chance. Please give me a chance to say yes.”
There were two crewmen in sickbay when she arrived, one with minor wounds, another clutching an arm split down to the bone by the sharp edge of a broken girder. The doctor tended to him as his assistant dealt with the other. Lenore doused her injured hand in carbolic solution, wrapped her finger in a stretch of gauze and took over the assistant’s tasks so he could help with the more seriously injured man.
She’d just finished cleaning her patient’s last cut when the deafening barrage of artillery fire suddenly halted. The silence hung weightier than a lead bell on a thin rope. Lenore caught herself holding her breath. She glanced at the others in the room. Like her, they didn’t breathe.
Nettie’s voice, still so calm and so sure, carried a lilt of triumph. “All hands stand down.”
Static cheers poured out of the speaking tubes and erupted in the sick bay. Lenore’s patient impulsively embraced her and just as quickly apologized, though his grin continued to stretch across his face.
A wave of relief, so strong it nearly knocked her to her knees, crashed into her. Her shoulders slumped, and her eyes filled with tears. “Nathaniel,” she whispered. Her leg muscles tensed with the urge to bolt from sickbay and race for the weapons platform.
The sick bay door flew open once more. Nettie’s boatswain’s mate, Mrs. Markham, filled the entrance. “Brace yourself, Sawbones. We got wounded coming in, six deep.”
Reunions would have to wait.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Nathaniel eyed Nettie first and then the Howdah pistol she’d brought aboard the Terebellum with her. The sidearm lay on the desk in the captain’s quarters. Nettie, fortunately, wasn’t within reaching distance. Instead she stood at the small cabinet where the brandy and port were kept. Port sloshed out of the glass as she poured from the decanter with a shaking hand.
Combat fatigue. He recognized the signs; he suffered them himself. His own hands were steady, but bolts of muscle spasms ratcheted up his back periodically, coming and going in a rhythmic echo of the thump-crack from the Dahlgren guns each time he fired at the horrifics. Not on
ly that, but his body refused to shed his armor in favor of the soft vicar cloth. No matter how he willed it, the armor didn’t soften and melt back into his skin. He only hoped that as things continued to calm aboard the Terebellum, his body would recognize the lack of threat and relinquish its defensive shell.
Nettie gulped down her port and stared at him with hard eyes. “You step foot again on any ship I captain, and I’ll have you shot on sight,” she vowed in a shrill voice. Her pupils were wide and dark.
Nathaniel didn’t take offense. “I’m fine, Nettie. No worse for wear.” He held out his arms and pivoted in a slow rotation so she could see all of him. “Not even a scratch.”
Such couldn’t be said for everyone. With the exception of four, most of the Terebellum’s crew had escaped injury. That was a blessing as her sick bay was currently bursting with the wounded and the dying from the three damaged ships. Because her speed topped that of the Gatria and the Bellatrix, the Terebellum was chosen to transport the injured and the dead back to London while the others trailed behind, towing the disabled ships.
Victory celebrations had been brief as the crews on all ships bent to their tasks of transferring people from one ship to another and coordinating plans for the return trip home. And all had paused to commemorate and mourn the loss of the Castra and her crew with the sounding of eight bells and a prayer from Nettie.
He’d listened to a last watch commemoration more times than he ever cared to. Britannia had lost a lot of men, women and ships to the Redan over the decades, along with all the other nations with coastlines bordering the Atlantic. No matter how often you heard eight bells, they never sounded any less mournful.
Their sad pealing made Nathaniel itch to hunt down Lenore, yank her into his arms and hold her until her body melted into his. No amount of reassurance from Nettie or even confirmation with his own eyes when he saw her running back and forth between sick bay and captain’s quarters calmed his fears. He’d only be satisfied when he actually held her.