Stalemate: Clockwerk Thriller Book One

by Thomas Webb

  “It’s the bridge, sir!” Vincent said. “Another messages from the Chief.”

  “Ignore it,” Montclair said.

  “Sir?”

  “Did I stutter, Major?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Good. Now, stand by, and don’t disconnect that line.”

  Montclair leaned over the table full of maps and stared at them. Everyone in the room leaned in closer next to him, peering at the maps as if the answer to their dilemma would suddenly reveal itself if they only stared hard enough. Copperhead picked up a miniature metal version of Vindication and placed it on the yellowed paper.

  “Our current position is here,” the old spy said, pointing to the tiny ship. “We’re headed north, toward D.C.”

  Montclair picked up a thick lead pencil. “You’d think the black airship would be carrying its payload straight into the city. . .but the patrols around the capital will blow any non-Union vessel clean out of the sky.” Using a straight-edged piece of metal, he drew a line across the map, running north to south and bisecting the Wastelands.

  “I’ve made use of the blasted lands many times in the course of my work, colonel,” the spymaster said, “and that directional heading you’re looking at? There’s nothing out that way for miles.”

  Montclair drew a second line across the map. “And this was the last direction we saw the black airship take.” He rubbed his chin. “But Washington D.C. lies further east.” Montclair followed the dark gray line on the map with his eyes.

  “That takes us away from Washington and right into the heart of the badlands,” one of Greg’s Marines, a navigational expert, said. “If we follow that heading, colonel, we lose any chance we have to fly ahead and warn Washington.”

  Montclair nodded as he looked closer. “As you say, right into the heart of the badlands.” He looked at Copperhead. “There’s nothing between here and there. Nothing, that is, except—”

  Copperhead tapped a small square mark on the map with his pointer finger. “Except the train station.”

  Montclair smacked his fist into his open clockwerk hand. “That’s right,” he muttered, angry with himself that he’d been too thick-brained to see it at first. “Damned locomotive runs straight into the center of Washington. The black ship was only the first step. They’re going to take it the rest of the way by train.”

  “We may not be able to catch that airship, but a train’s a different story,” Copperhead said. “About time we had a little luck.”

  Greg frowned. “That’s a hell of a gamble, Julius. Are you sure about this?”

  “No. I’m not sure, but it’s the only chance we’ve got.” Montclair turned to his XO. “Jasper, relay those train station coordinates up to the bridge. Let them know exactly where we’re—”

  There was a loud boom, and Vindication shook so hard Montclair’s teeth rattled. The airship’s warning claxons began to sound with earsplitting urgency.

  “That didn’t feel like engine trouble,” Copperhead said.

  Montclair stood to his feet. “It wasn’t, Copperhead. Those were aether shells. We’re under attack.”

  23 The Demilitarized Zone, Skies Above the Wastelands, July 1864

  “Are you all right?” Abe shouted, taking Scarlet’s arm.

  Scarlet shook her head, more in an effort to clear it than in response to Abe’s question. Fighting the waves of nausea and dizziness that swept over her, she accepted his help without protest.

  If only that damned ringing in her ears would stop! The warning claxons weren't helping much either.

  “Just a second,” Scarlet mumbled. “Just need to get my bearings.” What was that alarm for again? Her thinking was so fuzzy.

  “Are you certain you’re all right?” Abe asked, concerned.

  Scarlet rose unsteadily to her feet. She remembered now. The claxons sounded General Quarters. Vindication was under attack. They’d been hit, and that first blast had thrown her.

  “Follow me!” she yelled a bit more loudly than she’d planned. Her mind and vision starting to clear, Scarlet grabbed Abe by the hand and rushed across the deck.

  “Where are we going?” he asked, gasping to catch his breath.

  “No time to explain,” she said, dragging him up a metal ladderwell.

  They moved quickly, following the direction she’d seen the samurai take. She knew exactly where he was headed. Two more direct hits rocked Vindication before they arrived. The decks of the great airship heaved and lurched as it dove into evasive maneuvers. When they reached the foredeck, the scene was utter chaos.

  “Christ the Healer,” Abe swore.

  Dozens of crewmen lay scattered on the deck. Matrons ran back and forth, their starched white aprons stained red with blood as they alternated between moving survivors to the infirmary and caring for the critically injured on the spot. With scarcely enough resources to see to the living, they left the dead to fend for themselves.

  Vindication’s guns boomed like thunder overhead while the matrons worked feverishly. The airship was throwing everything it had at an attacker no one could see. The claxons blared, and the wind carried with it the coppery scent of blood. Scarlet coughed as thick, black smoke strangled her. Somewhere, the ship was burning.

  Scarlet turned to see her minder running toward them.

  “I thought I’d told you two to follow the samurai?” Copperhead shouted. “Are you bleeding?” he asked without waiting for a response.

  Copperhead brushed aside a damp strand of fire-red hair, touching a wound on the side of Scarlet’s head. The tips of his fingers came away wet with blood.

  Copperhead set his jaw. “Can you fight?” he asked.

  “I can always fight,” she said.

  “Good. The colonel and his men left for the bridge as soon as the first rockets hit. Figured I could do more good manning a gun than getting in their way.” A fit of coughing seized Copperhead. “Damned smoke!”

  He covered his mouth with a handkerchief and hustled Scarlet and Abe away from the edge of the deck.

  “I’m going to find myself a Gatling. I suggest you and Mr. Fluvelle do the same. Start putting rounds in sky and hope like hell you get lucky.”

  Just then, Scarlet spotted something from the corner of her eye, the faintest blink-and-you’d-miss-it hint of blue against the black velvet sky. In the split second it took to register, the buzzing began.

  “Get down!” Scarlet shouted.

  She grabbed Abe by the collar and lunged for the deck just as a volley of aether-fueled explosives pounded Vindication’s hull. The whole of the airship shook, causing them to lose their footing. Quick as cats, Scarlet and Copperhead were up again and helping Abe to stand.

  All the while, the ship’s claxons continued to scream.

  “Status! “Montclair thundered as he stepped onto the bridge. The view through the thick forward glass was just as he feared. Sable night sky, moon obscured by cloud cover, and somewhere in the darkness, a jet-black airship waiting to destroy them.

  “We’re taking fire, sir,” the watch lieutenant said.

  “I never would have guessed,” Montclair replied.

  She stepped aside, allowing him to take the commander’s position. “We can’t see anything sir,” she said, taking her new position at the airship's helm. “Damned ship is invisible!”

  A boom jarred Vindication, the deck beneath Montclair’s feet shuddering with the impact.

  “Evasive maneuvers!” he shouted. Montclair grasped the railing on the bridge to steady himself. “Get our envelope armor between the engines and the enemy airship’s last known point of fire! If they kill our rotors, we’re dead in the air.”

  Montclair’ stomach lurched as Vindication swung hard to port, placing her engines and propellers as far from the black airship's cannon as they could get.

  “All right, people,” Montclair said. “Issue an airship wide order: anyone who’s stationary, strap in and hold on. This is going to get rough.”

  Boom boom boom. Three
hits in quick succession, smaller impacts than the first, jolted the airship’s rear starboard side.

  “That first volley was thirty-two pounders,” Montclair said. “The second was shell guns. We’ve got only minutes before they reload their heavy cannon.”

  “Those impacts came from different angles, sir,” Major Vincent said. He’d followed right on Montclair’s heels and taken the executive officer’s position on the bridge. “They’ve changed their heading, sir, now turning to match our course.”

  “They’re trying to get aft of us,” Montclair said.

  “That shouldn’t be possible, sir. No airship has that kind of speed.”

  “Possible or not, Jasper, it’s happening. She’s fast. Faster than anything we’ve seen.”

  “But, how? Confederate technology isn’t that advanced. How can they move like that?”

  Montclair gritted his teeth, thoughts of the kidnapped scientist flitting across his mind. “I’ve got my own theory on that. “

  The sound of shell gun rounds impacting thick iron plating thrummed through the airship, rattling the crew to their bones.

  “Helm,” Montclair said, “relay to the engine rooms: full hold on the port engine, full burn on the starboard, and pray to the Healer the rudder holds. On my mark.”

  The helmsman hailed the engines and relayed the order, one eye on the loudaphone clutched in her hand, the other on Montclair. The bridge fell silent, the moving of levers and the whirring of components under the crew's capable hands the only sounds.

  Montclair began to pace. “We can’t see it, but we know they’ve got thirty-two pounders and shell guns onboard that thing, and we know they have Gatlings. They turned them on us when they left the barn outside Greenville.”

  Montclair concentrated his thoughts. There were rules to airships, the black airship’s dark aether technology-related speed notwithstanding. The thirty-two pounders had to be the biggest guns on the black airship, and they were the only thing that could actually bring Vindication down. Cannon that size had specifications. It took a good gun crew three minutes to reload them and fire. He’d been counting the seconds since the last volley. His timing had to be exact. Experience told him it would be.

  “Mark!” Montclair shouted.

  The helmsman relayed the order.

  Vindication spun like a top, her aft end whipping around as a volley of heavy aether shot screamed through sky that only seconds ago had been occupied by airship.

  A cheer went up from the bridge crew.

  “Hold the celebration!” Montclair yelled. “There’re not done yet,” he growled. “Not by a long shot. Master Gunner, full broadside volley, starboard guns. Now!”

  The master gunner nodded at his console, at the same time flipping levers and shouting into the loudaphone to the gun lines. Vindication swayed to port as her starboard guns blasted smoke and blue fire.

  “If we’re trying to hit something we can’t see, a full volley is our best chance,” Montclair muttered. He waited a beat, desperate to see a flash of fire in the distance. He held his breath until the helmsman uttered the words he'd dreaded hearing.

  “Negative impact, sir.”

  “Damnation!” Montclair slammed his clockwerk fist into the bridge railing just as more shell guns struck on their starboard side. “Set me a countdown helm,” he snarled. “Two minutes thirty seconds, starting now. “

  “We can’t evade them forever, sir,” Jasper said.

  “Don’t I know it.”

  “Seems you’ve got the timing of their thirty-two pounders, sir. That was a masterful maneuver, by the way.”

  Montclair snorted. “We’ll be damned lucky if we manage to pull that trick off again.”

  Major Vincent nodded. “Our armor’s too thick for their shell guns and Gatlings to penetrate, sir. Maybe if we stand our ground? Wait them out?”

  “And let Horton carry out his plans, losing Washington and the Union in the process? Not an option, Jasper.”

  “Thirty seconds left in your countdown, sir!”

  “Thank you, helm.”

  Christ the Healer, Montclair. . . think! If only we could see them. Even for just a second. If only. . .

  “Helm!” Montclair yelled, the beginnings of an idea forming in his mind. “On my order, come about forty-five degrees! Full burn, full propeller to port engine!”

  “Sir, “Jasper said. “That will bring us directly into their line of—"

  “Dammit, Jasper, not now! Helm, execute my order!”

  Vindication twisted on its axis like a spinning wheel. Montclair’s eyes narrowed as the trajectory of the incoming heavy aether rounds streaked right toward the bridge.

  “Take us up, helm! Climb!”

  Vindication’s elevators groaned with the effort of the ship turning upward. The incoming rounds dipped below the bridge, slamming into the airship’s ironclad belly just below the nosecone. Montclair, the only one on the bridge who hadn’t taken his own advice to strap in, flew from the platform, landing hard against the bulkhead.

  “The colonel’s down!” someone shouted.”

  Jasper was at his side in seconds. “You all right, sir?”

  Montclair shook his head. The claxons had started again, blaring their banshee call throughout his ship. “I’ll live. Damage report?”

  Major Vincent helped Montclair to his feet.

  “Coming in from all decks, sir. Fires on decks three and five. Damage to the outer main bulkheads. Engine room says rotor one is at thirty percent. The Chief says one more hit like that and we’ll be down to a single engine.”

  Montclair grabbed his head. “Someone shut off those damned claxons! Any damage to the envelope?”

  “It took the brunt of the last volley, but the armor is holding. Not sure for how long, though.”

  “Good.” Montclair shifted his attention to the helmsman. “Where does our countdown stand, lieutenant?

  “Two minutes forty seconds sir,” she said.

  “All right. Let’s make those minutes and seconds count. Jasper, you started as a lieutenant in the engine rooms, didn’t you?”

  “I did, sir.”

  “How much do you know about envelope gas?”

  “Some, sir, at least what they taught us in engineer officer’s training.”

  “How quickly can we vent aether gas?”

  Major Vincent’s brow knitted in confusion. “Sir?”

  ‘You heard me, Major. How quickly can we vent aether gas?”

  “Sir, if we vent, we’ll drop like a damned rock.”

  Montclair laughed. “Did you just swear, Jasper? Christ the Healer, they grow up fast,” he said, shaking his head. “Listen to me, Jasper. Vindication is the mightiest airship in the union fleet. I learned from the best, and I know her like the back of my hand. That Confederate airship is about to erase us from history. If they blow us out of the sky, we’ll drop like a rock anyway. Now I’ve got something in mind. . . but if it’s going to work, it’ll take sharp eyes from our gunners and the absolute trust of my crew. Will you grant me that trust, Jasper?”

  Jasper set his jaw. “Of course, sir. I will, sir. I mean, I do, sir. Always.”

  “Good. Now, answer my question. How quickly can we vent?”

  “If all the stops are opened? The entire envelope could vent in minutes.”

  “Two minutes, sir!” the helmsman shouted.

  Montclair nodded. “All right, Jasper, how much could we vent in, oh, I don’t know, say two minutes?”

  “Forty percent, sir.”

  “And if we vent forty, will sixty percent be enough to keep us in the air?”

  “It will, sir, but just barely.”

  “Just barely will have to do. Helm! Turn us about. Roll fifteen degrees and give us all the pitch you can. That’ll put the wind at our backs and buy us some speed. We just need to survive this next volley. If we manage to somehow do that, relay this order to the engine rooms: standby to vent aether gas from the envelope.”

  “Engine
room standing by, sir,” the helmsman said. “Awaiting your command.”

  “Initiate defensive flight pattern. One minute after that next volley hits, start venting gas. One minute and fifty-five seconds after that, I want every Gatling and shell gun we’ve got spitting lead in sky.”

  “Get to those guns!” Copperhead ordered.

  She watched as the man who’d taken her in and given her life purpose sprinted away from them across the deck.

  “Scarlet,” Abe said, bringing her mind back to the present. “Look.” He pointed toward the bow of the airship. “Look.”

  Amidst the chaos of battle, Ueda sat peacefully. The warrior from the island nation of Nippon’s legs were crossed beneath him. His sword lay flat across his lap, and his hands rested on his knees. Stationary rocket-launchers with crewmen sitting ready at the controls were positioned to his right and left.

  “What is Ueda doing?” Scarlet asked.

  “From what I can tell, it looks like he’s sitting,” Abe said.

  Scarlet rolled her eyes. “Christ the Healer, Abe, how you’ve survived this long I’ll never know.”

  She grabbed his hand again and took off at a dead run. Just as they reached Ueda’s position, another volley rocked Vindication from stem to stern. Scarlet braced herself against one of the rocket platforms.

  “Damnation!” she swore.

  Seeing Abe had fallen, she scrambled to him, grabbed his arm and pulled him up.

  He grinned. “Thank you,” he said, his cheeks burning three shades of red.

  “You should do as your minder told you,” Ueda said. The samurai unfolded his legs and stood. “Get to one of the guns.”

  “How did you know what he said?” Scarlet asked. “We were clear on the other side of the foredeck.”

  “Unimportant,” the samurai said. “When I move from this place, you will do as I do. Understand?”

  Scarlet nodded. Inaction had never been her strong suit. Her philosophy had always been, “when in doubt, attack,” so she grabbed Abe and followed her minder’s instructions.

  “Stay close,” she said as they ran toward the nearest Gatling gun.