Wings Over Talera - Charles Allen Gramlich [61]
A few light globes floated lazily within the ship, throwing rococo shadows off the multi-faceted surfaces of the engines onto the inside wall of the hull. The engines themselves looked powerful enough to drive a mountain into the air. They were spanking new, all polished-bright steel and black iron. But they had been tested. Fresh oil—which I judged from the odor and color to have been made from a source other than petroleum—gleamed on exposed surfaces and turned the wooden floors beneath into iridescent landscapes. There were no guards here, no workers.
An oaken bulkhead separated the engine room from the rest of the ship, and centered in it was an open portal that beckoned me. I stepped through, silently, into a broad corridor with half a dozen closed doors to either side. There were light globes fixed to the ceiling here. An engineer—at least I judged him so by the sheaf of papers that he studied as he walked—came toward me, head down and oblivious.
“Greetings,” I said.
The man jumped, nearly dropping his papers, and looked up at me with eyes wide. Then he sputtered:
“See here! What are you doing in here? You are not—”
I punched him in the forehead and he wilted like a lily under the sun. Dragging his unconscious form back through the door I’d just passed, I stuffed him and his papers behind an engine where he wouldn’t be seen. I left him unbound. I had my reasons. For one, he had not been “controlled,” had worn no speck of toir’in-or stone. I wondered if, by necessity, most of Vohanna’s machinists were given the same relative freedom.
Returning to the corridor, I padded swiftly along it, moving always toward the center of the ship. I met no guards, but from the attitude of the engineer I knew that being seen would mean a fight now. Some part of me rather hoped to be seen. I wasn’t. Not yet. Then I reached the heart of the ship and stood gazing up a tightly spiraled stairwell into the belly of the beast.
Most Taleran airships have large open holds between, at most, two or three layers of decks. This one was different. Above me I counted six decks, and there were many more bulkheads and it looked like enough cabins to comfortably house a large crew. Perhaps because steam can push heavier weights than sails can pull, Vohanna’s shipwrights had built with metal and heavy woods that would take an incredible pounding just to dent. But I wasn’t here to admire the thing. I started up the stairwell, moving on quiet feet.
On deck three I found what I was seeking.
Here at last was an open space that could be called a hold. And in it there were cannon—twenty-five guns to a side—with ugly iron mouths that jutted through portholes in the hull. In the center of the room, stacked high within frames constructed for that purpose, were rows of shot—stone and lead balls, short lengths of chain, nails. Neither the cannon nor the shot were pretty, but I was sure they would be effective. If the powder worked.
It was the powder I hunted, and beyond the ranked piles of shot I found the room where it was kept. That room made a square within the greater rectangle of the hold, and its walls were plated with metal as defense against projectiles and fire. There was a single entrance, a brass-banded door of oak, and in front of it stood two guards wearing swords, with leaf-bladed spears leaning close to hand.
The guards had already seen me. There was no going around them, no turning back. Over the door, where torches could not be used because of the black powder, a glow globe was fastened. I stalked into its light from out of the shadows. For a moment the guards were confused by my helmet and cloak. Wasn’t I one of theirs? Had I come early to relieve them? Did I bear a message? I smiled at that last thought. Surely, I did have a message for them.
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