Magnificent Devices 07 - A Lady of Integrity (21 page)

“Of course. The Lady taught us all, and to read charts. The only thing I don’t know how to do is repair an engine, but Tigg said he’d show both me and Lizzie a few common repairs on his next land leave.”

“Good. I’m going to fire her up. You take the tiller. The automaton intelligence system has Twelve back here on Claire’s cell, and Thirteen controls the vanes.”

“Aren’t you going to captain her?” Maggie asked, for the first time sounding a little unsure of herself. “It’s not my place if you’re aboard.”

“That’s why I asked you if you’d had any experience. I want to keep an eye on the engine. Sometimes when she’s been standing for a while like this, she needs a little tuning.”

Maggie nodded at last and went forward, taking the bags with her.

Alice pulled the lever that set the movable truss in motion, and then heard Maggie say, “Twelve, prepare for lift. Thirteen, vanes full vertical.”

Obediently, the lamp lit on the console, indicating that Twelve had activated the power cell, and in a moment the familiar smooth purr of the engines vibrated the deck under her feet.

“Good girl,” she said fondly, adjusting current and checking the pistons’ motion with the familiarity of long practice. “Nobody’s going to hurt you as long as I’m here.” She hollered through the portal, “I’ll cast off.”

Dropping lightly to the ground, she ran to the bow and climbed the ladder to the mooring rope like a monkey. This was the tricky part. The Ministry men up in that tower might not have seen them board, and the wind was too loud for them to hear the engine, but a woman swaying on a mooring mast? It would be hard to miss that.

She untied the rope and scrambled down. The ships only seemed to be anchored at bow and stern, so all she had to do was cast off the second rope, jump back in the engine compartment’s hatch, and tell Maggie to lift.

A report like a hunting rifle sounded in the distance, and something whistled over the fuselage of the neighboring ship. The stern rope still in her hand, she turned. What—

Another report. A fraction of a second later, the
Lass
’s starboard fuselage bobbed and rocked. Another report. And then Alice realized what was happening.

“Maggie!” she screamed, running like hellfire for the engine hatch. “They’re shooting at us! Get her in the air!”

Crack. Crack.
The other ships gave the port fuselage some cover, but at this rate frequency would trump accuracy, if the shots were coming from that tower.

And then Alice heard the sound that she never wanted to hear again—the one she had first heard in the Canadas, when they had crashed in the Idaho Territory. The shrill, forlorn whistle of gas escaping from the fuselage. More than one whistle. Three—four—it sounded like a regular choir of hopelessness.

“Maggie, lift!” Alice heaved herself into the engine compartment and slammed the hatch closed, turning immediately to kick the auxiliary engine’s throttle to full ahead. Thank the good Lord that Claire’s cell wasn’t powered by steam or they’d be full of bullets long before the engine was ready to fly.

“The gas in the starboard fuselage is below the red line!” Maggie shouted.

“Tell Eleven to disable it. We can still fly under one.”

“Eleven, disable starboard fuselage. Thirteen, full lift vertical. Up ship!”

As soon as they left the ground, the deck tilted drunkenly, off balance without the second fuselage to hold the gondola level as it hung between them. Everything that wasn’t tied down slid to the opposite wall, and if Alice hadn’t been hanging on to a safety rope, she might have gone clear out the exhaust well.

“Alice!” Maggie shrieked.

“Are you hit? Did you fall?” With one foot on the deck and one braced against the wall, Alice struggled forward. She had no sooner gained a handhold on one of the lamp cornices that she heard the
ping!
of a bullet striking metal. And another. And a third. Behind her, Four groaned like a man taking a fatal blow.

“No!” Alice shouted. “No! Not my engine!”

A bloom of flame curled up from beneath Four’s thorax and with a blast that would have killed her had she still been standing beside it, the engine exploded. Alice was thrown the length of the corridor and into the navigation room.

“Alice! Oh, Alice, don’t be dead. Please don’t be dead.” Maggie’s voice came from a long way away.

I’m not dead
, she tried to say, but her head seemed to have expanded to the size of the remaining fuselage.

Fuselage.

Gas.

Fire.

She opened her eyes with an effort of sheer will. There was no way on this green earth that she was going to stand in front of Claire and explain how she had let Maggie be killed. Not after what those two had been through in the English Channel. She struggled up.

“Gas,” she croaked. “Abandon ship.”

But the
Lass
was already rolling, its controls gone, poor Twelve and Thirteen helpless to make the engine obey their pilot’s commands. The corridor was already on fire—she could feel the heat of it from here, and the poor old girl was so old that her teak was dry as tinder. They’d burn right out of the sky unless they jumped, fast.

“Jump!” she ordered. “I’ll try and bring her close enough to one of the other ships that it won’t be too bad.”

“What are you talking about?” Maggie snapped. “If I go, you go.”

“Maggie, no—”

The auxiliary engine exploded and Alice realized they might not even have time to jump. Maggie had already flung on their two bags, crossing them over her chest, but now she grabbed Alice in a hug. Then she rolled them both right down the gangway and out the main hatch.

If they were going to die, let it be together, Alice thought as the sky whirled around her. Then the breath was knocked clean out of her as they landed. On something solid but giving. That smelled like canvas and warm pitch.

“Alice! Grab hold, quick, before we roll off!”

It was all she could do to close her fist around one of the ropes that formed a grid over whatever ship’s fuselage they had landed on, and lie flat on her back, gasping for air. Above them and about fifty feet to starboard, the
Stalwart Lass
rolled sickeningly as the flames leaped up the ropes and consumed the gondola with blazing speed. The second fuselage caught and there was a mighty
boom
as the gas exploded in a fireball that felt as though it singed the very eyebrows off her face.

What was left of Alice’s ship—her home—her way of making her living in the world—plunged to earth with a heartrending crash, and all that marked the grave of her captain’s hopes and dreams was the plume of black smoke rising slowly into the air.

22

“Do you think the captain of the vessel will ask permission of your father first, before he takes us aboard?”

Claire couldn’t help her anxiety—the spectre of Gerald Meriwether-Astor discovering their purpose and realizing that it would likely jeopardize all his plans hung over them all. Add to this the fact that she had been separated from the Mopsies and from Alice, and it was a wonder she could stand here so calmly on the stone pier, instead of snatching up the lightning rifle and plunging off to make sure they were all right.

“I don’t see why he would,” Gloria replied, looking fresh as a daisy in a white linen walking suit trimmed in royal-blue grosgrain ribbon. “My message simply said that Father wished me to come aboard
Neptune’s Fancy
until the
acqua alta
has receded. I did not actually mention the two of you, but it is not likely anyone will question that, either. I go about frequently with large parties, though …” Her tone turned pensive. “I cannot really say that any of them are friends.”

“Well, we are,” Andrew said in bracing tones. “No matter what happens, we are here for you as you have been for us.”

Gloria’s face softened and Claire squeezed Andrew’s arm in thanks for saying exactly the right thing.

They had settled up their bill at the hotel earlier, with an air of people taking a step from which there could be no return. Their trunks had gone to
Athena
with Tigg, Lizzie, and Claude. Her lightning rifle, sadly, was in Tigg’s possession as her second, and already she missed its comforting presence. At their feet, damp from the puddles on the pier caused by the ever higher lapping of the waves, sat their valises.

Claire imagined that Gloria’s actually contained a change of clothes and her brushes and combs, but hers and Andrew’s did not. They bulged instead with the rocket rucksacks, a glass breathing globe each, and a quantity of hose connected to a small engine.

“We will not have much time,” Andrew had cautioned her earlier as he divided the equipment between their two cases. “The rucksack will propel us into the depths, but not back again. The breathing engine will produce air for about fifteen minutes, if the monograph I read on its experiments is correct, so we must surface well before then.”

Fifteen minutes did not seem to Claire much time to locate their friends, free them, and swim back to
Neptune’s Fancy
, where Gloria would conveniently find them in the stern should anyone have noticed their absence and mounted a search in the meanwhile.

But it would have to be enough. With the dismal failure of Ian’s Plan A, they did not have a Plan C.

“Here they are,” Gloria said suddenly, and raised a gloved hand to point at the wavering shadow that had appeared thirty feet off the pier, under the water.

Claire watched in awe as the undersea zeppelin caused the surface of the sea to distend in a dome the size of a cottage, then break free of the water to rise above it, sheets of seawater cascading from its sides like the gleaming, moving walls of a mermaid’s castle.

When the viewing ports were clear, the vessel floated slowly to the pier. It was a good thing they were some six feet above the water, for it washed ahead of the sides of the vessel in a wave that crashed over the top, making them step hastily back.

Though why they should have done this when they were shortly to be as wet as it was possible for human beings to be was a puzzle. Instinct, Claire supposed.

A hatch lifted on the side of the vessel and a gangway tilted out and down. An officer in a neat blue uniform appeared and strode down it, removing his cap in the presence of his employer’s daughter. “Miss Meriwether-Astor, it is a great pleasure to meet you. I am Captain Barnaby Hayes.”

He quite reminded one of poor Captain Hollys, with his direct gaze and upright bearing. But he was somewhat younger, and Claire wondered if his ship had been caught in the debacle that was to have been the French invasion not so many weeks ago. She hoped not. He looked too nice to have been a misguided criminal.

“I am deeply grateful to you, Captain Hayes.” Gloria’s china-plate eyes had never been used to greater effect, and her hand lay in his like a confiding dove. “Father is concerned for my safety during the
acqua alta
, but
I
am concerned that looking after me is taking you away from your duties.”

“Not at all,” he said gallantly. “We are on standby awaiting orders. Nothing will give us more pleasure than to act as host to you … and your friends?” He turned to Claire and Andrew.

“Doctor Andrew Malvern,” Gloria said. Andrew shook hands and indicated Claire. “This is my fiancée, Lady Claire Trevelyan. Miss Meriwether-Astor has been kind enough to offer us refuge. It seems our hotel is rather unprepared for the water levels, and we made the mistake of hiring first-floor rooms.”

“Space is tight aboard ship—the
Fancy
, as you see, is not as large as many in the fleet—but we will find accommodations for you. Come along. Do watch your step.”

He guided Gloria across the gangway and waited as Claire crossed, then Andrew. A short ladder extended into the interior from the hatch, and he proved he was a gentleman by looking the other way when Claire and Gloria climbed down, both having to tuck their skirts into their belts in order to leave their hands free.

Andrew could not very well drop the valises down with the glass breathing globes inside, so he was forced to slip the handles of both bags over his arms and descend carefully without being able to see where he was putting his feet.

“Do leave your luggage here,” the captain said, showing Claire and Gloria into a cabin with two metal beds one above the other that had clearly been recently vacated and freshly made up. “Doctor Malvern, if you will follow me, I hope you will accept a cot in my cabin.” Andrew handed both valises to Claire and she stowed them under the lowermost bunk until they should be needed.

At length they were shown into a salon and introduced to the other officers. “Our journey back out into the Adriatic will take about two hours,” Captain Hayes said. “Please make yourselves comfortable next to a viewing port. We may be fortunate enough to see dolphins, or even a kraken.”

At Gloria’s gasp, he smiled. “Do not be alarmed. They feed on mollusks and fish, not dirigibles.”

“It is not that,” Gloria said. “Did not Father tell you? I should like to see the gearworks before we go.”

The smile on the captain’s face was replaced by confusion. “The gearworks? Under Venice? Whatever for?”

“I am afraid her enthusiasm for the sight is my fault,” Andrew said, smiling in his self-deprecating way. “I am deeply interested in their operation, and prevailed upon Miss Meriwether-Astor to include a look at them in our brief journey. I do hope this will not incommode you?”

“Well … Doctor Malvern … certainly not. We will be honored to assist in the process of scientific research.”

Claire felt almost ashamed to have to deceive the poor man, he looked so delighted to have his ship chosen for the privilege. But deceive him they must, and soon.

The captain gave orders to submerge, and the three of them stood next to a wide viewing port, the urgency of their mission eclipsed momentarily at the awe-inspiring sight of the water racing up the sides of the vessel and then closing over the bridge. They plunged into the green gloom of the lagoon, leaving the pier behind and sinking into the depths with a motion that could hardly be felt.