Order of the Air Omnibus: Books 1-3

by Melissa Scott

“Wait here,” he said, and got to his feet, hurriedly putting his shirt back on over his undershirt and tucking it into his pants. He slid his feet into his shoes without socks. “I’m going to get Lewis.”

  “Ok,” Jerry said bemusedly. He looked still half asleep.

  Mitch went into the corridor, pulling the door shut behind him. All was quiet. Of course the passengers were asleep at four in the morning. He knocked softly on Lewis and Alma’s door. There was no answer, so he knocked louder. “Lewis? Alma?”

  No answer again, so he tried the door. It took a moment’s glance to see that they weren’t there. No sign of a struggle, just gone.

  “Damn,” Mitch said softly. He hurried down the corridor toward the dining room, feeling the wrongness in the base of his belly. A one, maybe two degree angle. That was nothing. But it was wrong.

  The dining room was deserted. The tables had been laid for breakfast but it was too early for even the stewards to be awake. Mitch padded over to the port side windows, a broad sweep down the side of the gondola that in daylight afforded a magnificent view of sea and sky. Now it was overcast and even the stars didn’t show.

  But there were stars beneath. To the left and rear a chain of lights hung on the horizon, a curve of glittering gems against the darkness. Mitch had flown these skies himself, ten years ago, and it only took him a moment to get his bearings. The lights behind were Brixham and Berry Head, the generous curve the shape of Tor Bay. The airship had crossed the neck more or less over Plymouth and now took off across the dark waters toward France. A hundred miles to Le Havre on this diagonal course, though it must be less than sixty to Cherbourg.

  Which was not good news. If they were prematurely descending it would not be a tragedy to do it over England. Bournemouth had a good airfield if they could turn north. Portsmouth would be nearly ideal, though he didn’t think they’d get so far at this rate of descent. But this…. A sharp right rudder would turn them south to Cherbourg. Otherwise there was a hundred miles of gray, rolling waves before they crossed the coast again.

  Mitch almost ran back down the corridor, caught Jerry at the door coming out, his cane in his hand. “We’re descending,” Mitch said. “Way too early. We’re over the Channel and I’d guess we’re a hundred miles out from Le Havre.”

  “Um,” Jerry said. “That’s not good.”

  “You’re right. That’s not good. Crashing in the English Channel is not good, Jerry,” Mitch snapped. He could feel the adrenaline coursing through his veins, the same elongation of moments he’d always felt in combat, like there was all the time in the world for everything. “We’ve got to get to the cockpit.”

  “The pilots….”

  “Would be turning hard to port if they were able to,” Mitch said grimly. “We could make Bournemouth easily on that course. Come on, Jerry. And watch my back.”

  It could be a technical problem, a jammed rudder or the like. But somehow that seemed awfully coincidental.

  The door was locked, of course. And of course nobody answered his knock, not even when he pounded on it. The small glass porthole showed nothing, just a dovetail of wall that revealed nothing.

  “Open up!” Mitch shouted. “Emergency!”

  There was no response.

  “Oh shit,” Jerry said quietly, under his breath. At an extreme angle the wall did show something, a spatter pattern of scarlet against the white.

  Mitch put his ear to the door, listening. He thought he heard a faint moan. “Anybody there? Are you hurt?”

  The faint moan again.

  “Here.” Jerry thrust his cane at Mitch. “Break the glass and use the loop to reach in and catch the latch from the inside.”

  “Thanks,” Mitch said, grabbing it. There was a reason he was glad Jerry was a damned genius. He stepped back and swung, but it took several blows to break the glass. Then he put the cane through loop down, feeling around for the latch.

  “Help…” a weak voice murmured. “Gott in himmel…..” He trailed off with a gasp.

  The pilot Federman, Mitch thought. He was German, hired away from the Zeppelin Company. “Is that you, Federman?” Mitch called. “Hang on. We’re coming.”

  The loop of the cane caught the latch and Mitch levered it up, the door swinging open.

  “Oh damn,” Jerry said softly.

  Captain Brooks was dead on the floor beside the control chair, shot in the head. It was his blood that had made the spray of scarlet across the wall. Federman lay almost behind the door, half against the wall. He’d been shot in the chest, and one glance was enough to tell Mitch he probably wasn’t going to make it.

  That knowledge was in his eyes too as Jerry went down laboriously beside him. He looked at Mitch, and he knew.

  “Who did this?” Jerry said, checking his pulse with one hand, the other keeping his balance on the gore streaked floor.

  “Mr. Kershaw….” Federman said, his mouth twisting with pain. “He is a madman. He came in and said he had to talk with us…. He shot Captain Brooks….”

  “And you tried to take the gun,” Jerry said, his eyes tracking the bloody footprints across the floor, the position where Federman lay. “You struggled and he shot you point blank.”

  “He is mad….” Federman whispered. “Mad. He reset the controls. I do not know….” His eyes twisted up to Jerry. “There are forty passengers, forty innocent people….” His breath caught on a sob of pain.

  Mitch slid into the pilot’s seat, dashing blood from the controls with his left hand. No time. And all the time in the world. There were no lights ahead, only dark sea.

  “Listen,” Jerry said evenly. “Mitch, Captain Sorley there, is a top pilot, an ace. You tell us what you can and we’ll get you down. Mitch can fly anything that was ever built. Right, Mitch?”

  “Yeah,” Mitch said, his eyes roving over the controls. Elevator controls. Rudder. And these gauges – pressure dropping? There was something wrong outside of the cockpit, something badly wrong. “Jerry, close that door and latch it. Use your cane to jam the latch. We don’t want it getting back in here.” He couldn’t bring himself to say Henry’s name. That thing wasn’t Henry, who would never in a million years do this, who would never in a million years kill these innocent people and wreck his own airship. To be trapped in your own body, unable to stop it while it destroyed your life’s work, while it shot down men in cold blood….

  The rudder didn’t answer. Not that he’d expected it to. That would be too easy. A turn to port for Bournemouth. A turn to starboard for Cherbourg.

  “Ok, Federman,” he said calmly. “Tell me what these pressure gauges mean.”

  Lewis ducked back into the tunnel that led to the controls for the nearest hydrogen cell. At least the design was meant to be simple, something any idiot could read and follow. The handwheel for the main valve was underneath, a lock-bar holding it in place. He crouched to get better light on it, tested the bar and then the wheel itself: it was, as far as he could see, closed tight. He moved on toward the airship’s tail into the next cell — the main valve was secure there, too — and then the next. It looked as though Palmer’s guess was right, and it was the automatic valves that had been sabotaged. And that made sense: they were designed to open easily, to keep the pressure differentials from damaging the cells. It was the logical place for a saboteur to go to work. Especially one with access to all the memories of the man who’d designed and built the ship, and no need to worry about self-preservation….

  Alma met him on the ladder platform, shaking her head. “All the main valves seem to be closed.”

  “Here, too,” Lewis said.

  “Does it feel to you like we’re nose-down?” Alma began, and a single sharp report sounded from below.

  “Gunshot,” Lewis said. It made no sense, you’d have to be insane to fire a pistol inside the hull, with only a few layers of fabric between you and an explosive gas, a gas that needed only a single spark, a bullet ricocheting from a girder, to burst into flames. But the thing in Henry wasn’t
human and didn’t think like that.

  “This way,” Alma said, and slid down the long ladder. Lewis followed, his skin crawling. The thing was loose, he could feel it watching, somewhere, and he came off the ladder in a crouch, spinning to take in the full circle. The beam of his headlight flashed over gas cells and empty girders. Alma started down the stairs, into the lighted corridor beneath them, and Lewis heard her swear. Fifty feet ahead, Palmer lay sprawled across the width of the corridor, blood seeping from beneath him. A telephone handset dangled from its cord above him. Alma stooped to touch his neck, then straightened and reached for the handset.

  “Is this the control room?”

  Apparently not: she made a face, and spoke more loudly. “No, Palmer’s been shot. There’s a problem with the automatic release valves in the hydrogen cells, it looks as though they’re jammed open. You need to get to them right away — what do you mean, you can’t?”

  She put her hand over the mouthpiece, looked back at Lewis. “He’s locked them in their cabins. The off-duty riggers.” She took her hand away. “I don’t know where the duty men are, but they’re not responding. We’ll come and let you out —”

  “No,” Lewis said, and flattened them both against the corridor wall. He put his finger to his lips, and pointed up through the gap in the ceiling. A light was moving along the lower catwalk, coming toward them.

  “Scratch that,” Alma said, softly. “You’ll have to break yourselves out. We are going after the saboteur before he does any more damage.” She hung up the handset and looked up at the moving light.

  Lewis tugged them into the center of the corridor, switched off his light and Alma did the same. They could hear the footsteps now, steady, confident, coming closer with every stride.

  “Mr. Kershaw?” The voice came from aft, and the footsteps stopped.

  “Yes? What is it?”

  “Sir, there’s a problem, I can’t find the Chief —”

  The pistol spoke again, and there was a cry and a thud. Alma flinched, and Lewis bit back a curse. There was a moment of silence, and then the footsteps started again, moving away.

  “We have to stop him,” Alma whispered.

  “Wait,” Lewis said. They couldn’t afford to hurry, not when Kershaw, the creature, was armed and they weren’t. The same icy armor that had protected him in combat was descending on him, slowing his heartbeat, quickening his thoughts. Weapon first, he thought, and then — the best we can do is harry him, keep him from doing anything else to the ship, and hope the captain can fix whatever’s wrong. He looked up and down the corridor, seeing nothing but the smooth fabric-covered panels. Nothing here that would do them any good. The footsteps were fading, almost out of earshot, and he turned back to the stairs, started slowly up. Palmer had been in pajamas, but the man Kershaw had shot was duty crew and might have something useful on him.

  The catwalk was dark, lit only by light seeping though the gaps from the corridor below, but Lewis didn’t dare light his headlamp. He eased forward and saw the body first as a break in the light. He knelt beside it, feeling for a pulse — none, and when he rolled it toward him, he realized the man had been shot in the face. From the marks on his coveralls, he was one of the riggers. He heard Alma swear again, and she dropped to her knees beside him.

  “Dead,” he said, softly, though she could see it as well as he could. He was already going through the man’s pockets, unbuttoning the overalls, came up with a rigger’s knife and a smaller knife with a folding blade. He handed that to Alma, kept the rigger’s knife for himself, and in the leg pocket found a narrow aluminum wrench. He gave that to Alma as well, and pushed himself to his feet.

  “There,” Alma said softly, copying him. She pointed into the darkness.

  “What?”

  “I saw — there,” she said again.

  This time, Lewis saw it, too, the glow of the creature’s headlamp, moving away from them, toward the stern. There would be control wires there, access to the engines, a thousand ugly possibilities, and he hefted the rigger’s knife. “Let’s go.”

  Mitch studied the controls, trying not to look ahead into the darkness of the Channel. One wheel for the rudder, currently jammed and unresponsive. One wheel for the elevators. It had a little more play, but he hadn’t tried to do more than get the nose up a little, concentrating instead on getting them turned toward Cherbourg.

  “Otto,” Federman said faintly.

  Mitch didn’t look back, didn’t want to see the life ebbing from him. A nice kid, they’d spoken in the smoking room, the pilot delighted with his new job, the new ship.

  “What was that?” Jerry asked, gently.

  “Autopilot,” Federman said. “Otto — a joke….”

  “Yes,” Jerry said. “How do we disengage it?”

  “The column at the end of the chart table,” Federman said. “The lever, red handle. Pull that, then the foot brake.”

  “Ok,” Jerry said, dubiously.

  “You’ll have to do it, Jer,” Mitch said. “If that frees up the rudder —”

  “Yeah, I get it,” Jerry said. He staggered to his feet, limped toward the chart table that stood behind the pilots’ position. The autopilot was obvious once it was pointed out, a duralumin cylinder that rose maybe a foot above the tabletop. The controls were on the far side, from Mitch’s perspective, and Jerry stood for a moment, studying them.

  “The red-handled lever,” he said. Federman must have confirmed it because he went on, “Ok, there it is. And then the pedal.”

  Mitch put one hand on the rudder, kept his other hand on the elevator wheel. “Go ahead.”

  He heard a crunch of gears, presumably Jerry hauling back on the lever, and then a heavy metallic thunk.

  “Ok,” Jerry said again, sounding nervous, and Mitch felt the elevator move. The rudder stayed frozen, though, even when he pulled harder. He took a chance, hauled on it with both hands, but it still wouldn’t budge. He felt the nose pitch down, and grabbed for the elevator wheel again. There was a bubble gauge on the panel in front of him, and an artificial horizon, and he concentrated on bringing them both level, the airship sluggish under his hands. That might just be the size and the lack of normal lift, but he didn’t like it.

  “I have elevator control,” he said, “but no rudder.” He craned his neck to see the gas board, but it was too far away to read the dials clearly. “Jerry, how’s the pressure looking?”

  There was a silence, and when Jerry spoke, his voice was a little higher than normal. “Um. Ok. Looks like we’re still losing hydrogen, but the helium cells seem to be Ok.”

  “Good,” Federman said, “We can fly on that….” His voice trailed off alarmingly, and Mitch heard Jerry stumble across to him.

  “Easy now,” Jerry said. “Gently.”

  “A good thing we went with Mr. Kershaw’s design,” Federman said, more strongly. “One man if he must can fly it….”

  “A very good thing,” Jerry said, soothingly. There was a rustle of fabric, and Federman gave a grunt of pain.

  Mitch looked at the altimeter. Six hundred feet, and steady — or maybe not. The needle was creeping down, slow but inexorable, and he turned the elevator wheel to lift the nose a few more degrees. Not too far, the frame wouldn’t stand an abrupt angle, but enough to point the big ship upward. 590 feet.

  “Hey, Federman,” he said. “If I’m still losing altitude, what do I do?”

  There was no answer, and Mitch risked a glance over his shoulder. Federman lay with his eyes closed, Jerry fumbling with the bloody fabric over his chest.

  “Federman,” Mitch said again. They were holding altitude a little better, but the nose was starting to swing north. A wind out of the south, he guessed, and pulled as hard as he could on the rudder. It gave, just a little, and Independence swung back to its original heading.

  Jerry said something, voice soft and gentle — repeating the question in German, Mitch realized. There was a pause, and then Federman answered, gasping, and Jerry shushed h
im.

  “Ja, so, Junge. Bist du still.”

  Mitch looked back again, saw Jerry smoothing the hair away from Federman’s forehead. The pilot was breathing in short, painful gasps, and Jerry’s face was set and tired.

  “What did he say?” Mitch asked. “Come on, Jerry.”

  “Ballast,” Jerry answered. “Drop ballast to gain height. And — dynamic lift? Something to do with the engines?”

  “Yes,” Mitch said. That he understood, increasing the engines’ power and lifting the nose, spending speed to get lift. But in an airship — there was no natural lift, they’d still need gas — “Jerry, you’ll have to drop ballast for me. I think it’s that panel to the left.”

  “Ok,” Jerry said, and hauled himself to his feet again. “Yes, Ok, this is it. It’s water ballast. There are four, no, six tanks, it looks like they’re along the keel? I assume I want to drop water evenly from all of them?”

  “If you can manage it,” Mitch said. “I can compensate a little.”

  “From the middle first,” Jerry said, “and then the ends….”

  “Now would be good, Jerry.”

  “Ok.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Mitch saw Jerry pull a brass lever. There was a distant rumble, more felt than heard, and Jerry hastily pushed it back up to the closed position. He did it again, and then a third time. This time the Independence pitched up, and Mitch shoved the elevator wheel over to bring the nose down again. A pencil rolled off the chart table — the first time in the entire trip that there had been the slightest unsteadiness.

  “More?” Jerry asked.

  Mitch looked at the altimeter. 560 feet. “Yeah.”

  Jerry pulled three more levers in quick succession. The Independence staggered, but Mitch had been expecting it this time, and she leveled out almost at once. They were gaining altitude again: 575, 590, 605, leveling out at 620 feet. Mitch allowed himself a sigh of relief. Independence would fly on helium alone, Federman had said. If they could keep this altitude, they could probably make Le Havre….

  “Shit,” Jerry said. “We’re losing pressure in cell 14.”