The Gold Engine (The Gold Chronicles)

by D. Girard Watson

  David was going to hate living with this guy.

  The other midshipman aboard was Lara Suarez. She was short and pretty with a pixie haircut. She had a separate cabin, and David had met her only briefly when Lt Milton had taken him below deck. Up until they had arrived at Earth, Lara and Tyrone had been sharing watches on deck. The midshipmen had various duties: leading groups of hands in completing small tasks, keeping watch for other ships, assisting in navigation, bringing the 1st lieutenant his coffee, that sort of thing. Each watch was six hours long, so after doing these staggered watches for the month long voyage from New Boston to Urbana, Tyrone and Lara were exhausted. The leave the crew had taken in Urbana was much needed, but it wasn't nearly enough. They weren't going to be getting any help from David either because he would be working in the engine room.

  "All hands!" shouted a voice in the distance.

  "I'm off," said Tyrone. He gathered up his nail clippings and tossed them out a nearby porthole.

  "Um," said David, "so I guess there's no orientation?"

  Tyrone laughed.

  "How do I learn the regulations?" asked David, "Is there a book or anything?"

  Tyrone laughed even harder. "There's a book of Naval Regulations. The captain reads it to the crew every Sunday. I doubt you'd get much out of it. It's a list of rules dictating how long the sleeves on your uniform have to be, the penalty for sodomy, and how much salt beef you get on Thursdays."

  "I see."

  "Any other questions?"

  "Do I get a uniform?"

  "You'll get it from the Purser," Tyrone's smile softened a bit, "Look, you'll be fine. You're a midshipman so not much is really expected of you. The ship kind of runs itself. In the meantime, you'll figure out how things work. Just be sure to salute the officers, say 'ma'am' and 'sir', and don't get exploded. That last part is probably the most important."

  "Thanks."

  "By the way, the 'all hands' call includes you."

  "So what am I supposed to do?"

  Tyrone shrugged, "How 'bout I take you to the engine room. That's a start. But lets hurry. It's my ass if I'm not on deck soon."

  Tyrone led them down into the bowels of the ship. From his brief time on board, he gathered that the ship was composed of a series of levels. At the highest level, there was the main deck, which was covered in an iron shell to protect the occupants from incoming rounds. The ceiling of this deck had evenly spaced rows of ports that could be slid open and closed: open for when the ship was traveling and when the sailors needed the greatest amount of visibility; closed when they were engaged in combat.

  Below the main deck were the living quarters and engine room. The engine room was in the aft of the ship. As they approached the engine room, David could feel the temperature rising. He started to sweat.

  The room they entered was a scene from Hades. It was cavernous, probably the biggest in the ship. An enormous furnace belched fire in the center of the room. Around twenty men were working in nothing but thick pants and protective goggles, either shoveling coal into the furnace, servicing machine parts or throwing buckets of water on parts of the engine that must have been overheating. They were filthy. The coal itself occupied an enormous space next to the engine, itself a mountain. There must have been a thousand tons of it. The furnace fed into a large machine on the second level of the engine room. It was composed of pipes, gears, and valves, with steam belching forth from holes in venting hoses that fed into vents that presumably exited the sides of the ship.

  "Who the hell are you!" came a voice from the platform, "Get to work or get the hell out of here you sons of whores!"

  He was, apparently, talking to David and Tyrone.

  "This is the new engineer's mate, sir," shouted Tyrone. Before David could turn to his cabin mate, he was gone. David swore under his breath.

  The man who had yelled at David was bald, with short cropped hair on the sides of his head. He wore small wire rimmed spectacles and, like the other men in the room, he wore only pants, but he also wore a large leather apron that hung over the entire of his body. He was thin, but looked very strong. He was about fifty.

  He cursed, and headed down the stairs toward David. David resisted the urge to flee.

  "Those bastards send you down here minutes before we're supposed to leave?" He was even more imposing standing right in front of David. He was at least six and half feet tall and spoke with a sharp unfamiliar accent. "You look like you don't know shite."

  "I don't."

  This was not the right answer.

  "You don't know shite, eh?" said the man turning bright red, which was quite a feat given that his skin had a ruby hue from the light of the furnace. "At least the rest of these idiots have the brains not to admit it. If there's any space between your ears not taken up by the shite, here's a freebie. Call me 'sir' when you speak to me. Always. Even if it's to tell me I'm a feckin arsehole, there better be a 'sir' at the end of it."

  He stormed over to the wall and picked up a shovel. He came back and tossed it at David. He pointed to the coal pile.

  "Start shoveling." He walked away, muttering.

  A hand, covered in soot, clapped David on the shoulder. "Don't take it to heart. His bark is a lot worse than his bite."

  David picked up the shovel and got to work. He was unused to manual labor. Neither were his shoulders, arms or back. He quickly grew tired.

  "Easy, lad," said the shoveler closest to him. "Go slow. Pace yourself or you'll never last the watch." It was true. The other hands weren't shoveling the coal into the furnace as fast as they could. Their movements were rhythmic, graceful, almost like a dance. Each movement was purposeful yet spare.

  After an hour or so, a large bell sounded. David looked up and the engineer was on the second level. He put a horn connected to a long cable that disappeared into the wall to his ear. He grunted, put it down. He looked down at David.

  "Up here, now!"

  David, his arms on fire, dropped his shovel and worked his way up the stairs.

  "Midshipman Marr reporting for duty, sir." He said once he'd made his way to the engineer. He saluted clumsily.

  "You ever work on any kind of machinery before?"

  "Yes, sir. I've worked on engines since I was a kid."

  The engineer raised his eyebrows. It was true. He'd worked on various engines, machines, and devices since he was a child. He'd helped farmers near his father's house repair their steam-powered tractors. He loved taking apart watches, his father's navigation equipment, and model trains. Sometimes, he was even able to put them back together.

  "I worked on machines in the Natural Philosophy department at the University of Illinois, sir."

  "You know how this thing works?" he asked pointing to the engine.

  "I can figure it out." David was cocky, but he was in his element. A ship's engine was nothing compared to the computational complexity of the engines he designed for Waterhouse.

  The Engineer snorted. "Alright. We'll see what sort of things you can figure out. First, I want you to lubricate every gear on this machine. That needs to be done every hour of the watch. Got that? The can's over there." He waved at a large wooden bench and walked away.

  The bench was a large wooden table pushed against the wall of the room covered with grease, parts, and oily rags. David cleared a space and examined the oiling can. He looked up thoughtfully. Above the table, there was a soot-stained porthole. He wiped away the coal dust and looked outside. They were soaring through the clouds.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  From his cabin, David stared into a sea of black, dotted by stars.

  By the time he had looked out the engine room on that first day, they had already been in flight. He hadn't even noticed that they'd taken off, although in retrospect, it shouldn't have been surprising. The quantum field produced by the gold-powered engine eliminated the feeling of acceleration. They weren't actually moving because they weren't actually traveling through space.

  The pocket of space th
ey occupied was still in the middle of the corn fields in central Illinois. The cool breeze that came in through the window was from a front that had originated in Alberta. The gravity that kept them nailed to the floor was that of Earth's. Yet, they were millions of miles away from it.

  It was as though the gold snipped a piece of the fabric that constituted the space-time continuum and pasted it into another location. They existed in a pocket of unreality, an interdimensional island that moved at unimaginable speeds. The ship's engine made all of this possible. It harnessed the disruptive physical properties of gold into something that made flight between the stars possible

  Over his first three weeks, Jebediah, the master engineer, had taught him everything there was to know about the engine. It wasn't a computational device but it was still a fascinating piece of machinery. That hand had been right: Jebediah was a gruff, grumpy old bastard, but he was a good-natured soul at heart. He made sure that his men were treated fairly by the captain in all things: in provisioning, in leave, and in promotion. He didn't always get what he wanted, but he always tried. He swore at his men. He called them idiots, sons of whores, bastards, and shite-eaters, but at the end of the day, none of it mattered because they knew that if he was yelling at them, it meant they weren't pulling their weight, and for the ship to survive, they had to pull their weight. The engine room was the most important place in the ship, and if things didn't run smoothly, they'd all be dead. Their actions mattered.

  This wasn't to say that Jebediah's personality made him an easy person to work with, much less learn from. He was very different from Waterhouse. A student working with Waterhouse was made to feel like an acolyte in a religious order. Their sole goal was to worship science, that higher power, that beautiful goddess who gave grace to those who would pursue her secret knowledge in her hidden places. As an engineer's mate, David was made to feel as though he were an idiot. Jebediah didn't know much about taking on the perspective of his apprentice. He used terms for pieces of machinery without explaining what they were. He'd often repeat himself, spending time explaining the simplest mechanism, but skipping over complexities that were critical for running the engine.

  Luckily, the design of the engine was rather simple. The only way to control the quantum properties of gold was through electrical fluid. The physics underlying electrical fluid constituted one of the greatest mysteries in natural philosophy. It was impossible to evoke electrical fluid in man made objects. However, electrical fluid did exist in biological organisms, particularly in brains. No one knew what made animals special, but there was a link between electrical fluid and gold. Electrical fluid could propel gold and its accompanying quantum field in space. Administering the fluid in one direction caused forward momentum in the other, and the speed of travel was directly proportional to the amount of fluid applied. This was Einstein's great discovery.

  The design of the Engine was simple. In its central core, there were several small bars of gold, about eight ounces worth. Surrounding this gold was a vat of protoplasm. It consisted of brain cells from cats. Of all mammals, cat brains were the easiest to propagate and keep alive. The protoplasm's sole purpose was to create a connected network that applied electrical fluid to the gold bars. The mechanics of the engine had two purposes. First, it provided a steady drip of organics to the protoplasm to sustain it. The second was to induce the protoplasm to create electrical impulses across the gold bars at the correct intensity and in just the right locations to move the ship in the desired direction. It was this last part that required such a huge amount of energy from coal. Receptor neurons made a dense skin around the protoplasm, forming the boundaries of the containment chamber. Thousands of tiny nozzles surrounded the protoplasm. They formed a sphere through which the engine fired finely calibrated streams of air. This air was the ship's guidance systems. It determined which direction the ship moved and how quickly it was going to get there.

  The link between cat brains and the engine stoked the feeble imaginations of the engine room's hands.

  The simplest questions often led to unimaginative puns: "Aye, sir, the ship's pussy likes her fire right hot." and "It's taken me years to teach her how to purr just right, sir." These statements were always followed by uproarious laughter, as if the joke had not been made on a daily basis for the past fifty years.

  It was not a stimulating work environment, but the machine was interesting.

  On the whole, life aboard ship wasn't that bad. The hands were given half a quart of grog served out with the midday and evening meals. Grog was a mixture of rum, beer and water, and a quart of it would have knocked out the average civilian. In fact, it knocked out many of the sailors. Injuries on deck always went up after mealtime, and some of the hands hoarded their rations for a few days, and would then go on a bender with what they'd saved.

  David thought it was a foul concoction, but he drank it because there was little else. He occasionally had wine when invited to meals with the captain, but this was infrequent. It was not enough to keep away the dark clouds that fogged his thinking.

  He stared out the window. His situation could be worse, but he really didn't care.

  "You look awful." Tyrone had just come in off duty.

  "Thanks."

  "I've got just the thing to cheer you up. We've been invited to the Captain's table for dinner."

  The midshipmen typically ate the same as the enlisted men: dried peas, canned meats, potatoes, and the occasional piece of fruit. Eating with the captain was a real treat as the captain stocked his own pantry. Captain Gibson, a fat man who loved food, had a personal chef on board, and the chef was talented. David brightened a little. There would be wine.

  "Tyrone, let me ask you something," said David.

  "Shoot."

  "Why did you enlist?" He'd lived with Tyrone for three weeks and despite sleeping a little under two feet away from him, David knew next to nothing about him. He found himself liking the hulking southerner, despite his initial impression. Tyrone was like a big puppy dog. He was a straight shooter, not at all self-conscious, and loved the Navy. David found his approach to life refreshing, and Tyrone did know an awful lot about the ship, which was useful.

  "Well," said Tyrone looking thoughtful, "it's something I'd always wanted to do. My granddad was in the Navy. He made it all the way up to admiral. My family's got a plantation down in Valley, Alabama and when my granddad retired, he came to live with us there. He had the greatest stories about all the places he'd seen: the natives in Sumatra, the Osiris nebula, the alien animals he and his mates collected. He showed me a tooth from an animal he killed up in New Boston! After those stories, I wanted to join the Navy my whole life.

  "My parents weren't happy about it. My daddy wanted me to take over the family business, but they were pretty supportive when I joined. So here I am."

  "Don't you worry about getting shot?"

  "It's not something I really think about."

  "Don't you think you should?" David lit a cigarette. He'd been smoking more and more these days.

  "What would be the point?"

  He had a point.

  "Besides," he continued, "you're much more likely to be blown up by a cannonball."

  "That's not very comforting."

  "Truth is, combat has been pretty rare. I've been with this ship for a year. We've engaged with two privateers during that time and both of those engagements ended pretty quickly."

  "That'll change with the war."

  "I know," Tyrone said. "It's funny, at first I loved the idea of a battle. The way my granddad described it, it was all glory and heroics. But when we were chasing those pirates, I nearly shat myself, and that was with no guns firing. No, what I love most about the Navy is being in space and the beauty of the ship. When she's running right, she moves like a dream."

  David nodded in agreement. He could appreciate the beauty of objects.

  David had misjudged him. Maybe the eagerness with which he had talked about the war when they first met w
as really just eagerness about the Navy.

  They dressed for dinner with the captain. David had received a formal uniform from the purser and he felt like an idiot whenever he wore it, but the captain's table was probably the most formal event there was on board the ship. It usually included the midshipmen and several of the senior officers.

  They had some time to kill, so they went on the main deck to smoke. They beauty of the stars was overwhelming. The cool breeze made him feel as though they were back in Illinois, enjoying a night out even thought it was only 4pm. The perpetual night had taken its toll on David, as it did with most new sailors. The older hands were used to it, and barely needed to listen to the bell to know what watch it was or when to wake up.

  David saw the special delivery the Dakota had been charged with in the distance. It was a small transport ship that was about a kilometer ahead of them, the U.S.S. Boggle. He was surprised to learn that the special delivery was his old mentor, Professor Waterhouse. He and the parts for the machine were being taken to New Boston. That their escort was a ship-of-the-line spoke volumes of how valuable Waterhouse was to national security.

  Waterhouse, of course, had no idea that David was on the Dakota since communication between ships was conveyed through cannon fire. In an emergency the two ships could pull alongside one another for more in depth communication, but that hadn't happened. David assumed he'd be able to talk to his old mentor in a week or so when they arrived in New Boston.

  It was clear that Waterhouse was important. He was hoping that the old man could get him out of the Navy to work with him on this new project in New Boston. If the old man had enough sway, he might be able to pull it off. It was a long shot, but it was pretty much his only hope. He was sick of the grog, the salted beef, and the odd hours.