A Midsummer Night's Steampunk

by Scott E. Tarbet

  “Long story short, I wound up in Lakshmi’s leper hospital in Bombay. Talking with Queen Lakshmi as she was fitting me for prosthetics one day, she happened to mention that she was having a dirigible built in Switzerland so she could fly around the Subcontinent and gather up the worst cases. One thing lead to another, and here I am.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t want to give up my body, but flying would certainly be a dream!”

  “I wouldn’t want to give up your body, either!” he drawled.

  “Here, now!” Alex huffed.

  “Relax, little brother,” Ganesh laughed. “Don’t begrudge me some harmless innuendo. Innuendo is all I got.”

  “I must say, this is much smoother than I thought it would be,” noted Pauline, quickly changing the subject. “Much smoother than a boat.”

  “I swim in the air, not on top of it,” he said. “I ride the wind.”

  “Very nice.”

  “Hold on, there,” said Ganesh. Now, here is something interesting . . .”

  “Yes?” inquired Churchill.

  “The Bodensee has cast off from the Hohenzollern II, and is headed this direction.”

  “Pardon my curiosity, but how do you know that?”

  As if in response, a small bat darted in the open porthole and directly back out.

  “A colony of Fast Friends is with me wherever I go,” said Ganesh.

  “Fast Friends! Of course! But best be careful that they don’t eat too fast and consume one of the smaller Friends,” said Winston.

  “Right you are, Lieutenant! Last night, one of my Fast Friends, very young and hasty, mistakenly dove on Miss Peaseblossom herself, and got his ears boxed for his trouble. Hasn’t been able to fly right ever since. Hearing double, he says. Keeps running into things.”

  “The bats are your eyes and ears?”

  “Yep! Better scouts there never were. For instance, now they report that the Bodensee made a real quick departure right after we cast off. They’re on a bearing to intercept us. They must have people watching us from the ground.”

  “What will you do?”

  “Turn south a little. Climb above Bodensee’s usual operating altitude. Get you to Her Majesty, hopefully without a lot of fuss.”

  “Indeed. We have several very gravely wounded. Time is of the essence.”

  “Gotcha, Lieutenant. I’m going lickety-split. This southward turn will actually speed things up a bit. Normally, I would follow the river like the Brits ask us to. And that takes us a bit further north. Right now, we’re headed straight for Canary Wharf, over south London.”

  Ahead in the distance, a few points off their port side, a flashing light appeared in the darkness. “Semaphore?” asked Churchill.

  “Morse code,” answered Ganesh. “Slower, but more precise.” He translated slowly. “ ‘Ganesh . . . The captain of the Bodensee conveys his greetings to the captain of the Ganesh, and requests that he land immediately at the Victoria Air Terminus. Bodensee has reliable information that a fugitive German national has stowed away aboard Ganesh’—that would be you, Miss Spiegel—‘and that this person is in possession of state secrets stolen from the Reich.’ Guess they saw our little passenger transfer at mid-river.”

  Alex stepped to the windscreen, his hands comfortably interlocked behind his back, and stared toward the Bodensee. “Ganesh, would you transmit a message for me, please?”

  “What would that be?”

  “Please inform the captain that Prince Waldemar von Hohenzollern is aboard the Ganesh, and that he requires safe passage to the Kaiseradler.”

  Clemmie groaned. Pauline laughed out loud. “Brilliant! Use the insanity! Who are the Germans to say it isn’t so? At the very least, they’ll be embarrassed to fire on a crazy person.” Alex sighed, but made no response.

  Churchill looked at Alex thoughtfully. “Ganesh, I think Mr. MacIntyre makes a valid suggestion.”

  “Why not? Nothing to lose, at this point.” They waited long moments while Ganesh transmitted the message, then the answering flash began:

  “ ‘Ganesh, the prince studies at Heidelberg and has announced no plans to travel to England for the Jubilee or any other purpose. Your request for safe passage to the Kaiseradler or any other destination is denied. Land now, or prepare to be fired upon.’ ”

  Quickly, Ganesh blinked out an answer.

  “That was short!” said Winston. “What did you say?”

  “ ‘Nuts.’ ”

  “Just ‘nuts’?”

  “Just ‘nuts,’ ” said Ganesh. “I suppose the fat is in the fire.”

  The sound of the engines suddenly ramped up considerably, and he banked hard to the south. After a few moments, all the lights went out. Immediately, his nose rose high and he turned hard to the north. The engines rose to a scream.

  “You’re turning toward them! Can’t we just out-climb them and escape?” asked Clemmie, alarmed.

  “Nope, we can’t. The Bodensee is built for war. Raw speed. Eventually she’d run me down, despite me being able to climb and turn faster.”

  “What will you do, then?”

  “I guess I’ll just have to shoot them down.” The statement was as matter-of-fact as a weather report.

  The passengers stared at each other in disbelief. The engines roared over their stunned silence.

  “Shoot them down?” exclaimed Winston, after a moment. “You’re less than half their size! How much armament could you possibly have? With bigger guns, they’ll be able to fire from much further away. The fight will be over before you get off a shot.”

  “Now, if I were a boat on the ocean, you’d be one hundred percent right, of course,” allowed Ganesh. “But you’re thinking in two dimensions, not three.”

  In the distance, the running lights of the Bodensee went out.

  “What is he doing?” asked Alex.

  “He’s following the book,” said Ganesh, “the standard doctrine adapted from the Imperial Navy for nighttime airborne battle.”

  Alex frowned. “I’m not even going to ask how you know Imperial Navy standard doctrine.”

  “I have Friends,” said Ganesh, and somehow that reminder made everyone, even Alex, feel a little better.

  “So, what does the doctrine dictate?” asked Winston, curious.

  “He’ll be dumping ballast, just as I have done,” said Ganesh, “and will be in a turn several degrees wider than what he saw me able to do, in order to use his speed to chase me down without letting me get above them. Right now, he’s running his guns out and bringing them to maximum elevation. He is calculating an assumed rate of closure—deciding when to fire.”

  Clemmie was aghast. “But we’re over London! Have you all gone mad? You can’t be firing cannons at each other over the capital of the British Empire, guessing where the other is, in the dark! This isn’t the Wild West!”

  “Relax, Missy! I certainly won’t be the first to fire, and I won’t be guessing.”

  “Captain, may I?” asked Winston.

  There was a smile in Ganesh’s voice. “Certainly.”

  “We have Fast Friends,” Winston informed Clemmie. “Hundreds, if not thousands of them. They’ll be spread out from here to the Bodensee, passing back precise location, speed, and heading information. Am I not right, Captain?”

  “Yepper!”

  “And that gives Ganesh the ability to change speed and heading to confuse the enemy, yet still know exactly where he is at all times.”

  “You’ve got it, Lieutenant. You’d make a good flyer, someday.”

  “Oh, wonderful!” Clemmie moaned. “That’s all we need: Winston in the air!”

  “Now, you had all better grab a seat and hang on, because I may have to juke around a bit. I can move when I decide to move, far quicker than if there were commands to pass around.”

  As they quickly found seats, Clemmie asked Winston, “How can he promise not to shoot first?”

  “Because he knows the captain of the Bodensee will be making what he considers an edu
cated guess, and will fire a ranging shot, probably with an incendiary shell to light up the sky. Possibly very soon.”

  “Why soon?”

  “Because Ganesh showed them one thing and is doing another now that they can no longer see him: he has turned toward them, hard, and is gaining as much altitude as he can. They’ll make their firing calculations according to what they first saw, but their calculations will be flawed. Fatally flawed.”

  “Ah. I see,” said Alex. “He is drawing the Bodensee into a trap.”

  Out the porthole, they could see that the circular pursuit had brought them once again over the Thames. From astern, they heard the boom of the predicted ranging shot. A quarter mile to the south and several hundred feet too low, a star shell burst, lighting up the surrounding sky and the city below. Phosphorescent projectiles sprayed in all directions. If Ganesh had been where the captain of the Bodensee had believed they would be, their hydrogen would have been set ablaze.

  “Well, they had their shot! Hang on!” The turn was far more abrupt than any of them had expected. It seemed Ganesh was perfectly capable of turning on his axis in mid-flight. Suddenly, they were side-on to the rushing air of their forward travel, and Ganesh stopped on the proverbial dime, rolling side-to-side. Now facing Ganesh’s broadside, the Bodensee surged ahead, engines roaring, her crew no doubt frantically scanning the dark sky for their foe. And all the time continuing a course that would cross directly beneath Ganesh. “Gotcha, Herr Kapitan!” Ganesh said. “Crossed yer dang T.” The smaller dirigible hung in the sky for long seconds as the Bodensee approached.

  “Crossed his T?” Clemmie asked Winston.

  “Like battleships on the ocean,” Churchill explained. “If you can get in front of the other ship’s nose, side on, you get a broadside on him when his guns are pointed the other direction. The fight is over. He is sunk.”

  “Captain,” Alex broke in, his voice tight, “you have them dead to rights. They fired on you. No one would blame you if you shot them out of the sky. But they are sailors, sailors who serve my country and my family, just doing their duty, following their orders. I beg you, as a gentleman, sir, to spare their lives.”

  “Well, criminy!” said Ganesh. “Here I thought I was gonna record the first kill in the history of air-to-air combat.”

  “Please, sir!”

  “Okay, okay! Dangit! Three, two, one . . .” Then the ship lurched suddenly upward.

  “Did you just release more ballast, right on top of them?” asked Winston, incredulous.

  “Nah, just the waste tanks. Rude, huh?”

  Churchill couldn’t contain a burst of raucous laughter. “Now what?”

  “Now that I’ve covered them in refuse, I put them in the river. I know, I know, Your Princeliness! No incendiaries! Wouldn’t want to ignite their hydrogen.”

  And with that came the rip and tear of a pair of Vickers guns firing from beneath the nose of the Ganesh, directly down in perfect accuracy on the passing Bodensee. Soon, four aft pairs of gas bags hung in tatters, leaving only eight to rely on for lift. The ship immediately dropped at the stern, nearly uncontrollable. In a race for their very lives, the captain and crew of Bodensee fought frantically to bring the ship to the ground without a crash or a fire. Ganesh circled above and watched the Bodensee’s superbly trained crew ditch the mammoth airship, narrowly missing the Waterloo Bridge, landing half-submerged in the Thames. It would be a hazard to navigation for months.

  “Hoo-eee!” Ganesh exclaimed with satisfaction. “That was some fancy flyin’, if I do say so myself.” And he turned into the graying east for the final leg into Canary Wharf.

  ToC

  Some women use their tongues—she look’d a lecture,

  Each eye a sermon, and her brow a homily,

  An all-in-all sufficient self-director

  —Don Juan, by George, Lord Byron

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Regina Victrix

  Pauline lay on a divan in Ganesh’s cabin, her head in Alex’s lap, teeth gritted against the pain. The Dowager Empress’s personal physician from the Kaiseradler swabbed her arm. “Miss Spiegel, this is morphine.” He injected her so quickly, she had no chance to object. “It is enough to keep you comfortable while we prepare you for surgery, but not enough to put you to sleep.”

  Pauline gripped Alex’s hand tightly. Her eyes widened, and the pain relaxed from her face as the morphine moved through her.

  “You have to take care of my friends first,” she heard herself say.

  “Miss, your injuries are serious and require immediate attention,” the doctor said. “The broken femur alone could be life-threatening. The leg itself is at risk. If the ankle is not attended to quickly and infection sets in, you could lose that leg as well. A wellborn young lady—”

  Pauline cut him off, fighting not to slur her words. “No. Snout and Snug first. They’ve been shot and stabbed. More important than leg booboos.” She heard herself giggle, as if from a million miles away, and decided she had best just stop talking. She closed her eyes. It had been a long night. A little rest couldn’t hurt. Just for a few minutes.

  “She’s very strong-willed,” the doctor said.

  “Doctor, you have no idea,” answered Alex. “She’s a lion. Perhaps it would be better if you would do as she says. Finish the surgeries on the others, then send for her. I will keep her comfortable.”

  “Yes, sir-ee,” murmured Pauline, her eyes still closed. “I promise I won’t die.”

  The doctor shook his head and hurried from Ganesh back to the impromptu surgical suite aboard the Kaiseradler.

  ~*~*~*~*~

  The ballroom of the Kaiseradler had been transformed into a bustling temporary hospital. The surgeon from the Hohenzollern II checked once more on the Kaiser, who was sleeping deeply and peacefully. Then he gathered his staff and hurried to the adjoining berth to join their efforts with the Kaiseradler’s medical team. There were multiple surgeries to be done, at least two of them very serious chest wounds.

  Snout and Snug had been placed on operating tables. Their wounds were being cleaned and prepared for surgery, when a hush fell over the ballroom. The Kaiserin herself stood framed in the doorway, accompanied by Lakshmi and Jennie. It was Jennie who broke the silence when she strode into the room, grasped Winston by one hand and Clemmie by the other, and pulled them out the door. “Let’s leave the doctors to their work. You’re filthy. Out. Besides, ‘The time has come,’ the walrus said, ‘to talk of many things.’ ”

  Winston laughed. “Mother, only you would quote Lewis Carroll in the face of bloody death.” But he followed her willingly as she led them after Vicky and Lakshmi, who were striding toward the fantail where Ganesh was moored.

  “Mother, I believe you’ve met Miss Clementine Hozier.”

  “I have. I was at her coming out. How are you, dear?”

  Winston pulled her to a stop. “Mother.” He took a deep breath. “I must inform you that Miss Hozier will be my wife.” He looked past his mother at Clemmie, and raised inquiring eyebrows. Tears welled in her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. She gave him a tiny nod.

  Jennie patted Winston’s hand. “I know, dear,” she said. She kissed Clemmie’s cheek and resumed her march to the Ganesh.

  Lakshmi went straight to Pauline, who smiled dreamily when she saw her godmother.

  “Guten Morgen, geliebte Tante!”

  “Guten Morgen, mein Liebchen,” replied Lakshmi, kissing Pauline’s forehead. She went straight to work, gathering supplies from another compartment, cutting away the makeshift splints and bloody improvised bandages that swathed the injuries. Her face was grim. Quickly and efficiently, she cleaned and re-bandaged the wounds. She squeezed Pauline’s hand and stepped outside where Vicky and Jennie waited.

  “How bad is it?” asked Vicky.

  “Not good. Once they have set the bones, healing can begin, but these are both compound fractures—the ragged ends of the broken bones pierced the skin. Both wounds were submerged in ra
w sewage. It is almost certain to become septic.”

  “What can they do about it?”

  “Poultice them to try and draw out the infection. There is very little they can do. We can only wait and see.”

  “Will she lose the legs?”

  “If the legs become septic and are not amputated, she could very well die. But we won’t know for some time.”

  “That bad news can wait,” Vicky said. “In the meantime, I think it’s time to clear up some other misconceptions.” Lakshmi and Jennie nodded.

  She stepped aboard the dirigible, followed by her two friends. “Pauline, good morning.”

  “Good morning, Madam.”

  “Do you know who I am?”

  “No, Madam. I’m sorry, but I do not.”

  “I am Victoria von Hohenzollern, the Kaiserin. I am the Dowager Empress of Germany. The daughter of Queen Victoria. The mother of Kaiser Wilhelm. And the mother of Prince Waldemar von Hohenzollern.” A little bell rang faintly in Pauline’s morphine-clouded brain.

  “I’m honored to meet you, Your Highness.”

  “I am honored to meet the young woman who beat Jack the Ripper nearly to death with a spanner in a London sewer!”

  “Thank you.”

  “Pauline, my dear, do you think you will remember later if I tell you something very important?”

  “I believe so, Highness. They said they only gave me enough medicine to dull the pain, not to put me to sleep, but I keep dozing off.”

  “Try hard to listen to me very carefully, dear. I have several things to explain to you. The first is about your mother.”

  “My mother?”

  “Yes, your mother. After she married your father, she attempted to live in anonymity, far from the political troubles of her homeland. When she was a young girl, her family, the House of Hanover, was replaced in power in Prussia by my husband’s family, the von Hohenzollerns. She never told you all of this because she wanted you to grow up into the fine young woman you have become, without clouds of war and political intrigue hanging over your head.”

  “That’s nice,” said Pauline.

  “You should know that your ancestral house, the House of Hanover, also produced the current line of the monarchs of England, including my mother, Queen Victoria. So your mother and mine are cousins—distant, but cousins nonetheless. You are of the blood royal. Do you understand?”