Stephen Hunt - Jack Cloudie

‘You’ve not come to hang us, then, Mister Shaftcrank?’ asked the commodore, pushing his way out behind Jack. ‘Not come to carry out whatever sentence the navy’s scheming vice-admiral has cooked up?’

‘No, master cardsharp,’ said Coss, making way for the first lieutenant to scoop up the two flasks before re-entering the cell.

‘Then it’s a grand old counter-mutiny you’re running?’ asked the commodore. ‘How many men do we have loyal to the captain?’

‘Just myself, sir, that I know of,’ said the steamman, before correcting himself. ‘Well, the ship and myself. Rot my regulators, but the crew knows the vice-admiral’s reputation for ruining the reputations of those who cross him — there aren’t many on board willing to take the captain’s side now he’s been relieved by a senior admiralty officer.’

The ship! Jack looked at the slowing drum on the transaction-engine lock and it suddenly dawned on him who the steamman had been whispering to using the speaking trumpet.

‘The ship, she’s like you!’ said Jack.

‘It takes time to come to full consciousness,’ said Coss. ‘The ship was never broken, it’s just taken time for her intelligence inside the transaction engines to develop to full self-awareness. The ship had to take the final steps on the journey herself, after her creator disappeared halfway through her construction.’

‘She’s alive …’ said the commodore.

‘Yes,’ said Coss to Jack and the commodore. ‘Her systems went up to full throttle when the two of you were imprisoned and weren’t around anymore to help me shut her down, and that was when she began communicating with me. She is like I was when I was taking my first steps in my nursery body. The proving flights, all that has gone before, the ship can only remember them as a dream.’

A dream . That was what the steamman god had been trying to tell Jack. And when the Iron Partridge ’s gunnery systems worked in perfect simulation offline during their engagement against the two Cassarabian airships, they hadn’t been becoming dangerously erratic — they were functioning as they were meant to for the first time! Lemba of the Empty Thrusters had heard the ship’s song in the sky, the song of her burgeoning intelligence, and had chosen to answer it.

‘If the ship’s on our side, old steamer, can we use her to turn our trumped-up charges of mutiny into real ones against the vice-admiral?’

Coss shook his metal skull unit. ‘The Iron Partridge wasn’t built for that. The majority of her systems are external facing — the engine cars and rudders and gunnery. She needs a crew — not one as large as ours, and certainly not with manual overrides crippling her — but she still needs a crew inside her nevertheless.’

‘The mission,’ said the first lieutenant appearing in the doorway with the captain of marines limping by her side, semi-restored by the dosage from the red canteen.

‘The ship’s mission is why I am here,’ said Coss. ‘Just as failure is an orphan, success has many fathers. You must succeed in carrying out the ship’s original orders if a board of enquiry is to find in your favour and against the vice-admiral. I have discovered a way to get to the boat bay without any of Pasco’s men observing you.’

The commodore looked askance at the prospect of abandoning the safety of the vessel.

‘You always knew we’d have to go in on the ground in the end,’ said the first lieutenant. ‘It’s why the State Protection Board put you here.’

‘Boots on the ground, lass,’ said the commodore. ‘I just wished they weren’t mine.’

‘The skipper,’ said the brute of a marine from Westwick’s side. ‘I’m not leaving him behind on any ship filled with perishing mutineers.’

‘His cabin will be too well guarded,’ said the first lieutenant. ‘And even if we break him out without killing half the crew, by coming with us, Jericho would be siding with escaped mutineers. If he can even make the charges stick, the worst the vice-admiral can do for the destruction of a prize vessel is have Jericho cashiered. If Jericho comes with us and we don’t succeed, they’ll hang him for sure. You don’t want to see Captain Jericho led to the scaffold by the vice-admiral, do you?’

She might be telling the truth of it, but Jack caught the whiff of dissembling in her argument. She doesn’t want Jericho along with us in case he becomes struck down again by one of his dark humours. A genius in the air would be no use to the pitiless woman on the ground.

‘You won’t be able to come with us either, I fear, Mister Shaftcrank,’ said the commodore. ‘There aren’t any blessed steammen in Cassarabia, not even as slaves.’

Jack thought he saw the steamman’s vision plate pulse with relief. As the only creature within hundreds of miles with any idea of the process the nascent intelligence of the ship was going through, the ship was in his charge now, and he surely wouldn’t want to abandon her.

‘Don’t concern yourself with my fate, master cardsharp,’ said Coss. ‘I doubt if Pasco’s men will suspect me of helping you. They see me a simple soul, a loyal machine for them to command like one of their tools — and as far as they’re concerned, I haven’t left the transaction-engine chamber.’

And when Coss led them outside, Jack saw why. The door to the ship’s magazine was open, exposing the automatic loading station. Coss had ridden the shell-loading mechanism all the way down from the upper deck, unseen by any of Pasco’s mutineers, and they could travel up to the boat bay the same way. Jack knew who they would blame for the cell break, even without the tools of his old trade to hand — the thief who had nearly broken into the vaults of Lords Bank. Master Engineer Pasco would be only too glad to be proved right in his opinion of Jack.

Even woozy on his feet, the captain of marine made short work of the two sailors on duty in the boat bay with his pile driver fists. As they lay unconscious Jack held open the heavy hatch so the first lieutenant could access the bay’s cargo hold. She climbed down into the ship’s guts and re-emerged a minute later with a nondescript-looking crate. This case, the commodore informed him, contained the supplies the State Protection Board’s quartermaster had made available for covert infiltration into Cassarabia. Next, Coss helped Jack and the commodore winch open the bay’s doors as the first lieutenant and Henry Tempest prepared the vice-admiral’s pocket airship — still assembled with her envelope gassed — for launch. Jack watched his friends raid the other boats’ provisions for enough expansion-engine fuel for a long-range expedition. This was one flight where they couldn’t expect to be resupplied by the navy.

Coss pointed out of the hangar towards the peaks of the Benzaral Mountains passing below. ‘I have asked the ship to arrange a distraction inside both the crows’ nest and the h-dome when you launch. You’ll have enough time to conceal your aerostat behind one of the peaks until we have flown out of sight. I doubt if the vice-admiral will waste much time trying to search for you. He is eager to present his account of the loss of the Fleet of the South before any possible survivors beat him to it.’

‘Thank you, old steamer,’ said Jack. ‘The last people I thought were my friends saw me tossed to the hangman back in the Kingdom to save their own necks, and here you are risking yours to rescue me from the noose.’

‘Vault my valves, but it would be an unlucky executioner who tries to hang a steamman,’ said Coss. ‘Besides, we are serving members of the Royal Aerostatical Navy, you and I, and that is what shipmates do — they watch out for each other.’