Stephen Hunt - Jack Cloudie

Jack could only snort, his fingers trying to find purchase on the rifle as the seemingly unstoppable force of the soldier crushed his larynx. It was true, then, what the sailors had been whispering about Tempest: that he had been left half-deranged by an addiction to opiate poppies. That he had to regularly slake his thirst on a mixture of drugs and rum just to stay sane.

‘He’s one of ours, Henry,’ the female voice spun out of the darkness that was beginning to envelop Jack.

Jack croaked desperately for air as the pressure eased.

‘Drink from your green flask, Henry.’

There was a grunting like a pig feeding and Jack focused on a green-lidded canteen being slugged back by the marine officer before being clipped down on his belt next to an identical red-lidded canteen. And there, next to him, was First Lieutenant Westwick, severe and proud, a pair of blooded cutlasses gripped tight in her hands.

‘Sorry, boy,’ said the brute, extending a giant hand and enveloping Jack’s trembling arm. ‘I was stuck in one of my rising rages, so I was.’

Well, that makes everything okay then.

Jack’s eyes slipped across the transaction-engine chamber, dead bodies littering the deck. Benzari tribesmen moved across the room with their short curved swords out, checking for any in the enemy boarding party that might be faking their demise.

‘Your leg,’ said Jack, pointing to a knife embedded in the captain of marine’s limb.

‘It’s not mine,’ said the brute, as if that explained everything, pulling the knife out as though removing an inconvenient thorn.

By his side, First Lieutenant Westwick turned at the sound of Coss Shaftcrank’s voicebox, the steamman kneeling over the corpses while he chanted prayers to his ancestors and the Steamo Loas. ‘Belay that racket. Pile them up and roll them out the nearest hatch.’

‘Wreck my relays, but their people have established burial rites,’ protested Coss.

‘Those are my rites, and those are your orders, skyman. Their god can clean them up from the ground below using the vultures as his divine instrument.’ First Lieutenant Westwick angrily spun Jack around, jabbing one of her fingers at his face. ‘That was a synchronized volley from our mortars. An automated volley.’

‘The mortars weren’t accepting manual control,’ protested Jack.

‘Do you know how many sailors died in the last voyage this malfunctioning metal hulk made under full automation? If those mortar shells had been loaded fin up and warhead down, you would have caused a full salvo detonating right above the ship’s magazine! You, sir, would have blown our bloody remains all the way back to the Kingdom.’

‘The lad saved the ship, first lieutenant,’ called John Oldcastle, still checking his pistols. ‘The Cassarabians were swarming over our top side like ants across a blessed picnic blanket.’

‘He gambled our ship and our mission and he got lucky,’ spat the woman.

Outside the ship a ripple of fire sounded — not the oak-sawing sound of their cannons, but the whoosh of landing rockets blasting out and the rattle of anchor lines running behind them, then the Iron Partridge started to shake from stem to stern.

‘Ah,’ said John Oldcastle admiringly. ‘There’s the wild genius of Jericho at work. He’s fired our anchors straight into the Cassarabian airship. That one’s not in the admiralty rulebook. He’s pulling them in. You’ve got your ship, Maya, if you’ve got the taste for another game of tickle-my-sabre with their crew.’

‘Open the hatches along the engine car repair gantry,’ Westwick ordered her hulking captain of marines. ‘We’ll board them at the broadside.’ She seized Jack by the scruff of his striped navy shirt, wiping off the blood on one of her cutlasses against his shoulder. ‘I’ll deal with you later, Mister Keats.’

‘You did the right thing, lad,’ said John Oldcastle, watching the first lieutenant sprint out with her Benzari warriors in tow. ‘Remember that. Not by the book, but the right thing, nevertheless.’

Jack felt a knot of fear tightening in his stomach.

Back in the unforgiving slums of Middlesteel, doing the right thing was often as costly a mistake as you could make. You only looked out for yourself, and at a push, for your family. Jack’s decision, would, he expected, end just as badly. In his world, no good deed went unpunished.

Jack watched the binds being tightened around his wrists, his face pressed between the frame of a fin-bomb rack, the closed bomb-bay doors locked beneath his boots.

‘For disobeying a standing order when pressed by the enemy,’ intoned the first lieutenant as she read out the charges. ‘For cowardice in the face of enemy fire and imperilling the Royal Aerostatical Navy vessel Iron Partridge while on active duty.’

‘Take this lad,’ said John Oldcastle from behind Jack, pressing a cloth-wrapped wooden handle between his teeth. ‘Bite down on it, it’ll help save your tongue.’

‘Skyman Jack Keats is sentenced to ninety lashes.’

‘What is this?’ the voice boomed from behind the crewmen lined up along the side of the bomb bay, Captain Jericho pushing his way through the press of sailors.

‘The maintaining of discipline,’ said First Lieutenant Westwick.

‘I did not order this!’

‘Under the articles of war, I have the authority to-’

‘It is customary to inform the captain before ordering a flogging,’ barked Jericho. ‘And those articles you are suddenly so familiar with allow me to set the number of lashes.’ He pointed to the Benzari marine holding the cat-o’-nine-tails, the knotted lines of the whip dangling dangerously by his side. ‘The minimum. Ten lashes only.’

‘That’s far too soft a sentence,’ objected the first lieutenant.

Not for my bloody spine, it isn’t.

‘This is not a flogging ship. You have duties to attend to, first lieutenant. The officers we took prisoner have been made ready on the prize vessel.’

‘I see no prize vessel.’

‘You will find her firmly tied off against our starboard side, first lieutenant.’

‘Read your orders again, captain. We have a very specific objective to accomplish and it does not include losing weeks we cannot afford on a round trip to tow a Cassarabian airship all the way back to the border just so you and your crew can line your pockets with Admiralty House’s bounty money.’

That drew furious murmurs from the crew. It was the greatest bugbear of any airship crew that the only time they got to claim prize money was when they helped the Fleet Sea Arm capture enemy u-boats and frigates on the surface of the ocean. Now the skymen finally had an enemy their equal in the air and they had shed their blood to capture one of the foe’s vessels. That share of the admiralty’s prize money was their right!

‘That is not our tradition, d’you see?’ said the captain.

‘Damn your bloody tradition, sir,’ said Westwick. ‘Orders trump tradition and the articles of war, both. We’ll learn what we can from the prisoners and take what we need from the captured Cassarabian aerostat and then you’ll mine her and you’ll blow her.’

Her words drew a collective growl from the crew. Whether it was seeing their captain treated like a pet hunting hound by the first lieutenant, or the prospect of losing a sailor’s share of a thousand guineas’ prize money, Jack couldn’t say.

‘Master Engineer Pasco,’ barked the first lieutenant, ‘I don’t believe our marine has the height to make a mere ten lashes count. Step forward and take the cat-o’-nine-tails from him.’

Jack groaned as the mean bullying officer did as he had been ordered.

‘This is your fault, thief,’ whispered Pasco, pulling Jack’s shirt up. ‘She’s only doing this out of spite because you wouldn’t take your ninety licks like a man. You’ve stolen six month’s extra salary out of the pockets of every Jack Cloudie on board the ship.’