The Aviator

by Morgan Karpiel

  “Lady Sinclair!” a male voice yelled from outside the dining room, the brass door knobs jittering frantically. “Unlock the door. We’re under attack. We must get to the lawn!”

  Attack?

  Another blast hit the windows, shattering the glass in a hot flash of light. Gilda screamed, ducking and shielding her eyes as the balcony doors blew inward, the hard collapse of metal and wood thundering from the docks. Debris ripped through the balcony, torn aluminum tubing and pieces of railing cracking the frame, a shower of burnt rivets peppering the wood.

  Gilda lost her voice, staggering out of her chair and tripping on the hem of her dress. She pushed up against the wall, staring past the balcony railing to the docks outside. Ash floated like snow, fire searing the air as a row of airships lay cracked in the water, their framework burning above the waves. Men and horses ran from the glare, carts bright with flame, pilings, rails and cranes collapsed.

  “Oh God.” She put her fingers to her lips.

  “Lady Sinclair!” The voice at the door was back. “Lady Sinclair!”

  She shook her head, steadying herself through force of will. Pushing up from the wall, she headed for the door.

  Another crash issued from behind it.

  “No!” the voice yelled again. “Stay where you are. Stay—”

  The polished doors splintered in front of her, broken in a blast of gunshots. Screaming erupted from the hallway, cries for mercy and cracks of pistol fire, the fierce shouting of foreigners.

  Gilda stumbled back, smelling blood thick in the air.

  The brass knobs jolted again.

  Nathan’s voice rang in her heart. Go. Run!

  Turning, she headed for the balcony.

  The door broke open behind her.

  She sprinted over broken glass, bunching her skirt as she leapt over the fractured railing and dropped through a cloud of ash. She hit the lawn, dress boots first, and staggered through soft flowerbeds, her skirt ripping on the border of rose branches.

  Destruction reigned in the glaring firelight, the waterfront now a hellish nightmare of roaring flames and shouting voices. The shrill cry of a horse sounded at the edge of the lawn.

  Another pistol exploded from the balcony.

  She looked up to see a man leaping over the railing to follow her. Clenching her teeth, she bolted across the grass in panic.

  Her pursuer was on top of her in seconds, pushing her to the ground. She kicked him, screaming, but he grabbed onto her neck, sliding a curved blade from his belt. She heard the hiss of his language, a promise of ruthlessness, then a sharp pistol retort.

  The man fell back, his body slumping to one side.

  Gilda blinked, feeling blood wet on her cheek, on her neck. She wiped it off with trembling fingers, crying softly.

  “Are you hurt?” the Duke of Sutton appeared on a horse behind her. “Not yours, is it?”

  She startled as a great volley of pistol fire unloaded in the mansion, crackling shots followed by screaming.

  “Steady,” he said, stepping down from the saddle. “That would be our team, clearing them out and securing the mansion.”

  “I—” She found her voice through gasping breaths, trembling, but strong enough. “I appreciate your timing, your grace.”

  “Are you hurt?”

  “Hurt?”

  “More shaken, perhaps.” He came close, still balancing the pistol in one hand. His gaze moved quickly over her neck, her dress. “Heard your screaming. Lovely sound, given what trouble I’ve had finding you.”

  “There was a man behind the doors. I…”

  He grimaced, taking her hand and drawing her into a warm embrace against the soft plum velvet of his jacket, holding her until the crippling panic eased. “There, there, now, we are still breathing, are we not?”

  “Or we have gone to God together.”

  “Not I, dear girl. Clouds and choirs are someone else’s real estate.” He pulled back, his gaze warm, smudges of blood on his collar and sleeves.

  “The Sultans?”

  “They had a good plan. We lost five, perhaps six, dirigibles to explosive devices, but I think we’ve saved the other three that were moored, as well as the five that were approaching. We were able to signal them with the lighthouse at the last minute to keep them away.”

  “But—you knew? All of this?”

  “Precious little. We caught one of them with the information we had, and he produced a confession, but with only moments to spare, too little time to thwart them all. The station has been damaged, surely, but not as much as they intended. Having found you still breathing, I dare to say it might have gone far worse for us.”

  “Explosives?”

  “Hidden in the airframes.”

  She stared at him, fighting the cold return of fear. “Hidden in the moored airships. Only these here.”

  “Not only those. They had agents on two of the dirigibles that departed. We have to assume, at this point, that they are lost.”

  “Nathan?”

  He hesitated. “I’m afraid so.”

  She stared at him, not comprehending it. “He couldn’t.”

  The Duke said nothing, but his silence was the loudest thing she had ever heard. Gilda looked past him, focusing on the burning docks, chaos and murder too staggering to grasp. Her eyes stung.

  “I can’t accept that,” she whispered.

  “My dear,” the Duke said softly. “You are the strongest person I have ever known. You must stay strong now.”

  “He cannot be dead. I would know. I would—” She shook her head, hating the tears as they came. “I would know.”

  He opened his mouth, then paused, rethinking his reply. “By tomorrow, we should be able to send a search vessel out to check the route. We will make every effort to find him.”

  “Tomorrow? But he couldn’t be more than one flight hour out. If they crashed the airship, the wreckage would be close. He might still be alive.”

  “The docks are burning. We can do nothing.”

  “How can you say that? We could take another airship, or a boat, or a raft. It doesn’t matter! We could find them, now, tonight.”

  He grimaced, wincing through smoke. “We are burning. There may still be explosives on the airships, or the boats. There may agents of the Sultans anywhere. We must restore order, check the equipment and secure the station. We can do nothing else.”

  “You won’t let me take one of my own airships, George?”

  He registered the use of his given name with look of regret, placing his hand on her arm. “Not until we know it is safe. Many of our friends are dead. We must be brave. We must not endanger ourselves, or others, in our grief. We will send a search vessel tomorrow, perhaps an airship too. Every effort will be made, I promise you.”

  She swallowed the harsh taste of blood, struggling against the image of Nathan in the water, swallowed by blackness. She glared across the broken docks, desperation turning to anger, to strength.

  Tomorrow would be too late. If there was wreckage on the surface to mark the location, it would only burn for a few hours. Then it would drift and vanish with the currents by morning, spread over an area so wide that it might never be found. At night, in the blackness, a fire on the ocean could be seen for miles. From the sky, it could be seen forever.

  There had to be way to get into the air, an airship the Sultans would not have been able to reach.

  If you knew me that well, you might have become aware, over the past ten years, that I don’t just build airships.

  He’d said it right before he slammed the door on her.

  She turned in realization, lifting her gaze to the lighthouse on the hill above. The test hangar loomed at the top, a private domain with its own staff, well guarded at all hours.

  “A lovely chat, your grace.” She quipped, stepping past him to take the reins of his horse.

  “What on Earth are you doing?”

  Grabbing hold of the pommel, she dragged herself into the saddle, the tat
ters of her dress, sans petticoat, accommodating a reasonable seat.

  “Gilda!”

  “Come now, surely you don’t believe this animal has a bomb strapped to it. I assure you, it is perfectly fit for flying.”

  “My dear—”

  “Back for tea.” She kicked the mare’s haunches, rising in the stirrups and balancing against its jostling stride as the animal galloped for the road.

  The guards were impossible, but Nathan’s flight technicians, a pair of wide-eyed men barely out of their mother’s arms, were easily convinced, unlocking door after door for the Mad Lady Sinclair in her ruined dress. A soft globe of lantern light played around them as they led her through the hangar, the scraping sound of their boots creating long echoes in the darkness. Vague shapes loomed in shadow, pieces of skeletal metal framework and heavy, elongated cages. Desks and drawing boards, lumber, wire and rolls of pale canvas lined the path. Plastic heads, torsos and arms lay scraped and dismembered in piles.

  “Good Lord,” she whispered.

  “Testers, your ladyship. Mr. Lanchard went through hundreds of them. We always bring back what we can find from the crashes.”

  Her breath quickened, the air thick and dizzying. “Very thorough.”

  “He’s particular about things.”

  “Has he made any successful flights?”

  “The last one flew over the ocean for quite some time.”

  “Before crashing?”

  “Harder to find all the pieces in the water. But he’s got this new one all sorted out. It’s the best looking of the lot, God knows.”

  The technician trotted ahead to pull back an enormous canvas curtain. Metal rings screeched along the length of the wire, wide sheets of billowing fabric sliding out of view, revealing a machine unlike any she had ever seen.

  Gilda shook her head in amazement. “It is so beautiful.”

  It was a light and bird-like craft attached to a rail, with a fin-like rudder and a long, canvas-covered wing. A wooden slip, much like a skiff, provided a place for the pilot and the controls, with a wooden wheel connected to a cable and pulley system for rudder control. A triple row of riveted iron canisters was fitted under the wing, connected through an elaborate manifold of shaped copper tubes to a single conical nozzle.

  She approached the machine, running her fingertips over the wing then tracing the shining outline of the nozzle with her fingers. The metal was ice cold and sweating.

  “The reticulated exhaust nozzle,” the smaller technician said. “It shapes and controls the stream of the gas from the solid propellant in the tanks. He ordered us to prepare it for a test in the morning, but then he left on short notice and now we have to take it apart.”

  “The gas propels the craft?”

  “That’s the idea, your ladyship. You go as high as you can on the tanks, then you drop them with the tank rack release and glide down for as long as possible. The skiff allows this model to land on the water, though we’ve had some structural problems with that too.”

  A reconnaissance glider.

  “Incredible,” she murmured, ducking underneath the shadowed frame to examine the rail attachment beneath the skiff. It looked like a modified pulley wheel designed to ride a steel track. Confused, she stood, following the riveted rail to the massive doors in the hangar’s outer wall. “And this?”

  “The catapult.”

  “The what?”

  The technician pointed to the steam boilers in the corner, their copper tanks surrounded by gears. A panel with a single lever appeared in the center of the machinery, its purpose fairly obvious.

  “He hurtles this thing out those doors?”

  “And over the cliff.”

  Gilda lost her breath. “I see.”

  They all waited a moment.

  Nathan…

  “Very well, then,” she said. “Is it ready?”

  The technicians shared the same horrified expression. The taller one shook his head. “With respect, your ladyship, you can’t possibly pilot this craft. It would be suicide.”

  “I cannot tell you how many times I’ve heard that before.”

  “Yes, but at night—”

  “There’s a nearly full moon. I can see the compass, the dials, and am well versed in star navigation, as all Sinclair pilots must be.”

  “A night landing is impossible.”

  “Challenging, I prefer to think.”

  “And there’s no way for us to find you.”

  “I’ve been assured that a search vessel will be underway shortly.”

  The smaller technician looked sick. “But—”

  “I would appreciate a flare pistol, a fresh pair of clothes, some water, blankets, a lantern, and whatever medical supplies you have here.”

  “Mr. Lanchard will be furious.”

  “Yes,” she said softly, the pain in her heart unbearable. “I hope so.”

  The retracting hangar doors rumbled open to the moonlight, the shining expanse of the ocean forming a breathtaking horizon beyond them. Gilda lowered the heavy pair of goggles over her eyes, bracing against the seat, her fingers pressed white on the wooden wheel. Against the wall, the short technician gripped the catapult release lever, steam hissing through pipes and release valves behind him.

  “Ready!” he shouted.

  Ready. She couldn’t breathe. The world narrowed to single, terrifying second. Clenching her teeth, she focused on the dark blue horizon, hearing the other technician yelling at her from beside the glider.

  “Keep it steady at thirty degrees, ride it up as far as you can until burnout, then make your course change after you’ve dropped the tanks!”

  She nodded her acknowledgement.

  From the corner of her vision, she caught his sharp retreat as he ripped the release cable through the exhaust nozzle. The catapult clicked. The glider jolted forward, scraping along the rail.

  Gilda swallowed a scream, thrown back against the seat as the machine shot out of the hangar and soared into the starlit sky. She fought a surge of panic, the wind buffeting around her in a violent gale, gas exploding through the air. The glider shook as it withstood the full force of ascent.

  Breathe. Keep it straight. Breathe…

  Grimacing, she fought the wheel, steadying the rudder as the ocean slipped far beneath her, the dark glitter of waves surrendering to the pale light of the moon in its cloudless sky.

  The propellant grew thinner and began to sputter out, the force ebbing enough to allow her body to settle comfortably in the seat. Leaning forward, she pulled the rack release for the tanks. The canisters slid from under the wing and fell, tumbling toward the ocean.

  The world became quiet, liquid and dreamlike. The machine suddenly felt weightless, its long wingtips trembling in the air, its wood creaking softly as it rode the wind.

  Turning the wheel, she angled the rudder, banking the craft into a long westerly turn to line up on the flight path to the mainland. It sailed gracefully through the night, high above the water, above the world.

  She shook her head in awe. “You’ve outdone yourself, Nate. You’ve outdone us all.”

  Fire cut a wide swath across the water, oil and flotsam shimmering on the waves, smoke and heat blurring objects bobbing on the surface. Gilda passed over it with a heartbroken cry, the glow of flames dancing over the glider’s fabric wing, casting hot reflections in the lenses of her goggles

  There were no lifeboats, no collection of survivors clinging to floating debris, just empty, burning silence. The sealed cargo containers dotted the edge of the slick, rocking half-submerged under the waves, either intentionally dropped by the pilot or blown loose.

  Did you know? Did you understand what was happening? Did you fight? Nathan!

  Gritting her teeth, she turned the wheel, banking the glider in a wide arc until the wreckage lined up in front of her. With the pull of another lever, she raised the fabric spoilers on top of the wing, following the hasty instructions provided by Nathan’s flight technicians.
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  The machine descended toward the water.

  Waves grew larger, their writhing crests highlighted by the flames, blurring underneath her as she dropped through smoke. Wincing, she strained in the seat and dropped the flaps, bracing as the skiff skimmed the foam then crashed into a thick swell.

  Gilda snapped forward in the seat, the air knocked painfully from her chest. She ducked her head, covering it with her arms as wood splintered around her, tearing pulleys loose and whipping cables free. The wing collapsed, cracking in half at the center point and breaking away, leaving her sitting in a skiff with an aerial rudder.

  She wet her lips, blinking with the realization that it was over.

  The skiff floated closer to the flames, the air hissing with fire. She frowned and unbuckled the strap around her waist. Leaning forward in the small craft, she pulled loose a remnant of the wing to use as a paddle.

  Shapes appeared in the water around her, silver fabric and destroyed cushion foam, papers floating with the ink washed from their pages, echoes of a sudden, terrifying moment, something dark and unfair.

  He could not have lived through this. Not this.

  She stifled a sob, the weight of everything lost now too great to bear, strength ebbing to exhaustion and pain.

  A dark head appeared in the water ahead, floating face down behind a lifeless sprawl of arms. The figure’s hair bloomed along the surface, long and black in the firelight.

  “Nathan? Nathan!” She paddled the skiff in clumsy stabs, breathless in the agonizing stretch of minutes it took to reach him. “Nathan!”

  His body drifted close, nudging up against the bow of the skiff. His head dipped lower before she could catch it, his shoulders loose and disjointed as she grabbed onto his jacket.

  “No, no, no.” It was a senseless sob, a weak recognition of death.

  Heaving against his weight, she drew him up, water pouring from his ruined face, a fractured vision, bloody and unrecognizable.

  “Nathan!” She let him go and staggered back, dropping to bottom of the skiff and pressing her palms tightly to her eyes. The image burned, her heart twisted and broken with the memory of it.