Jack Cloudie

and pushed up the switches that would ease the ship out of her long sleep, the thinking machines in the transaction-engine chamber beginning to take control of wide swathes of the Iron Partridge’s systems.

‘Sir,’ called a sailor with his eye to a telescope at the front of the control car. ‘Enemy vessels closing on us fast. They’re breaking into two squadrons. Half their fleet appear to be staying at our altitude, the other half of their disposition are climbing.’

‘Should we climb too, sir?’ the man on the elevator wheel asked nervously.

‘A partridge must stay close to the ground,’ barked Jericho. ‘And an iron one has a particular reason to stay low, d’you see. Close with them and hold our altitude steady. Make to cut their lower squadron straight down the centre.’

Pulling a speaking trumpet on a chord out of the panel, Jack managed to get in contact with Coss up in the transaction-engine room. ‘The captain is with us; I’m pushing all systems to automatic. What’s the situation up there?’

‘We’re feeding the boilers with everything we’ve got,’ the steamman’s voice came back faintly over the whine of noise at the other end. ‘You’re going to need to keep your cardsharping to your desk on the bridge, I don’t have time to help you. The calculation drums are turning so fast inside the chamber, they’re smoking oil faster than I can lube the machinery. We’re burning the drums out up here.’

Overheating with less than half the ship’s systems activated? What had Jack been thinking of, believing that he could run the vessel as her mad, dead designer had intended? Setting our iron genie free of her bonds.

‘We’re about to receive the lower squadron’s broadside,’ announced Lieutenant McGillivray behind Jack. ‘And the second squadron will open their bomb bays above us, if we last long enough for them to overfly us.’

‘We’ll survive that long, Mister McGillivray,’ said Jericho. ‘Their broadside will be incendiary shells, designed for a normal airship. Even carper will burn if it’s made hot enough — but we’re going to find out what this knightly mailshirt we’re wearing is good for, eh. Bosun, what’s our windage?’

‘Southerly, sir,’ called the bosun. ‘We’re tacking against it, they’re riding it down onto us.’

‘That fleet’s admiral knows his trade, then,’ said Jericho. ‘Wind right behind them. In about a minute, the lower squadron’s propellers are going to throw their rotors into full reverse and brake their formation, just as they release those aerial mines of theirs. The other squadron will rise above their mines and let the wind carry their full ordnance onto us — I believe they’re counting on opening their bomb bays above a floating wreck. Mister Keats, how are you doing there?’

‘Still restarting the ship’s automation, captain,’ called Jack.

‘Helm, when they release their mines, throw our engine cars into reverse, make it look as if we’re trying to avoid the mine field at first, but then I want you to plot a course directly through their ordnance.’

‘Sir?’ queried the ship’s master pilot.

‘Their mines are attracted to RAN canvas, man, not metal plate, d’you see? The lower squadron will pull back to avoid the killing zone. Their mines are going to become a buffer zone that will shield us from being raked at close quarters.’

‘And the ’stats that are climbing to overfly us?’

‘So much the better, we need to be exactly where they seem to want us, master pilot,’ boomed Jericho. ‘Put us right under the shadow of their bomb bays.’

‘Squadron on our altitude is braking, sir,’ barked the watch. ‘Just as you said. Multiple launches from their bomb bays. Seventy, eighty, no, upwards of a hundred aerial mines in the air and running.’

Jack glanced up, the dark chutes of a host of mines blowing towards them, a swarm of charges spinning underneath shadows of billowing fabric. Jack had to fight to keep his eyes on the console in front of him rather than watching the moon-silhouetted cloud of death sweeping through the night towards the Iron Partridge.

The airship wasn’t responding fast enough, Jack realized. The entire voyage he had spent trying to keep this beast of a craft slumbering and now he was trying to rouse her. His hands slippery with sweat, he cleared the dust off the dial indicating the transaction-engine chamber’s processing cycles, its dial hand twitching in the blue zone. They were still running too cold.

Have I murdered everyone on the ship? Seconds away from hitting the enemy and the Iron Partridge was stuck in a fatal no-man’s land somewhere between full automation and complete manual flight.

Jack picked up the speaking tube to the transaction-engine chamber. ‘I can’t lift all the seals on the automation, Coss. They’re fighting my overrides. I’m not going to have enough time to do this …’

‘You’re acting as though your job is still to keep the ship locked down,’ the steamman’s voice sounded back. ‘Kiss my condensers, but you have all the help you need, Jack softbody. You have the airship herself!’

The airship. Yes, Jack had the airship. His hands danced over the punch-card writer, composing a last desperate sequence of commands that was intended to let the Iron Partridge perform surgery on herself, allow the iron genie to crack her own bottle.

There was a second where Jack had fed the punch card into the injection mechanism before the hiss of the card being sucked out of his fingers merged with the decompression of the bridge as a mine detonated volcanically against their hull. Something happened, written in fire and debris and confusion. His consciousness blacked out for a second. The detonation sent him sprawling into his equipment and down, hard, to the deck.

Jack’s head throbbed in agony as he pulled himself to his feet. The impact of the blast had turned the Iron Partridge into the wind, and smoke was billowing past the control car’s cracked canopy, the chutes of the enemy’s aerial mines visible through knives of broken glass, mines floating all around them like night-borne seeds blown off a meadow.

Jericho lay sprawled across the deck, part of the canopy embedded in his chest. The captain was just conscious enough to recognize Jack stumbling over to kneel down by his side.

‘Is the helm — able to answer our control, Mister Keats?’

Jack repeated the skipper’s faint query towards a group of sailors pulling the two dead pilots off their stations, then nodded in confirmation at the captain as the crew wrestled the Iron Partridge back onto her course.

Captain Jericho tried to turn his head as a clacking sound passed through the vessel, low at first like crickets chirruping in grassland, then louder and louder. Piston arms extending, pneumatic systems connecting, plates opening, steam-tensioned clockwork powering up, spars locking into place. A thousand hungry, chattering systems drawing mechanical breath for the first time, manual overrides themselves being overridden. A minute before, the Iron Partridge had been a dead thing, imperfectly flown by a full-sized crew of hundreds of sailors. Now we’ve been demoted to mere components within the machine.

‘I believe you were — successful — Mister Keats,’ coughed Jericho, blood spilling from his mouth across his high collar. He gestured for Lieutenant McGillivray to come over. ‘Under — full — automation the master cardsharp has — equal rank to the first lieutenant. Given — First Lieutenant Westwick is not on board — you now have seniority on the bridge, Mister Keats.’

‘Sir!’ McGillivray protested.

‘It’s the — admiralty ordinances — Mister McGillivray,’ Jericho smiled weakly. ‘You — know — how highly — I respect the navy’s confounded ordinances.’

‘Of all your commands, captain, this is the bloody daftest,’ said McGillivray. ‘With respect, sir, of course.’

‘When did — I ever — receive — that from any upland — officer?’ asked Jericho. ‘The — ship — is yours — Mister Keats. I would ask you — one favour.’

Jack had to stop himself from choking on his reply. ‘Sir?’

‘Not the navy’s — graveyard for — me. I still maintain a family — plot. My wife and son are buried there. Plant — m’bones — down there next — to theirs.’

‘I shall, sir.’

Jericho’s final sigh joined the whistling of the wind through the bridge’s broken canopy, merging and melding with it, until only the wind was left. Trying not to shake, from the cold and the shock of his captain’s death, Jack got to his feet, every eye on the bridge gazing uncertainly at him.

Lieutenant McGillivray removed Jericho’s jacket and slowly covered his corpse, making a makeshift blanket of