Mechanized Masterpieces: A Steampunk Anthology (17 page)

If he survived.

“There, men. They have hit us, and we still fly. Let us give them a response!” he called down into the waist of the ship. The men shouted their defiance as well in a hearty cheer.

Lieutenant Gay pulled men from the middeck crews for even greater speed on his reply volleys. The six guns that had shots on the Germans crashed out again. Three hits scored: two on the balloon bag and one clearly had hit the enemy’s gun deck.

The two dirigibles had been angling in the sky, reducing the height advantage that the Germans’ had. Of a sudden, the
Frederick
definitely lost a much greater degree of altitude. At least five hundred feet more loss than Wilkins’ math projected.

“Reduce our ascent level by three degrees on the ailerons, if you please, Mr. Bunsby. We are having a great effect on the enemy and I should not like to lose the ability to place a volley up his backside!”

“Aye, sir. That is a right good description.” Bunsby passed on the order to trim the propeller planes to the desired level.

Before the Germans could fire their third volley, Lieutenant Gay responded with his six guns again. Two of the guns, with Mr. Copperfield standing near, had a line of shot standing ready, with two rails that had been laid down between. Wilkins would have to investigate that after the battle was concluded.

“Three hits. Again, three solid hits, two to the hull, one to their quarterdeck.”

Then the enemy fired, and Wilkins once again ordered maneuvers. He felt three hits by the enemy, one crossing the gun deck. The shot nearly obliterated one of his own gun crews.

Wilkins saw a man down. No, half of a man. He had no legs beyond stubs that had been his thighs. Another man was buried under the truck of the cannon that had been destroyed by the enemy shot. Two hale airmen tried to reach the wounded man, but the trapped man didn’t appear to be moving.

The gun captain, Booth, attempted to pull a two foot piece of wood from his left shoulder, a splinter that had taken him. With luck, Dr. Sawyer would see to Booth, and he would live.

“Those wounded to Dr. Sawyer as quick as you can.” Wilkins ordered two men. The enemy shot had destroyed one gun crew and part of the next, though on the port side of the ship.

Losses. Men he had known by name, now wounded, some dead. It did not look like any man had been thrown over the ship. In the RDC, the cry of ‘man overboard’ conveyed a far worse image than it did in the senior service.

Gay called to him, “Captain Micawber, we approach. Sir, we need time to set up the port battery again.”

Wilkins looked at the spatial relationships. “I can give you a few seconds; that is all, Mr. Gay. Then you will have to shoot with what you have.”

 “Aye, sir. Aye. Copperfield, to gun three with your men. Get that gun up and pointed at forty-five degrees, do you hear me! Jump to it, you men.”

Wilkins turned his mind to buying more time. “Hard to port and down planes ten degrees.” He started counting. If he had time, he would have worked the math. Instead, he went by feel. He counted and eyeballed the distances.

Then, “Hard to starboard. Up planes twelve degrees, cut the starboard propeller.” He raised his voice and shouted towards the waist of the ship. “Mr. Gay, we begin our attack run!”

“Aye, sir. Fire as you bear. Aim at the forward hull!”

And instead of a volley, one after the other of the
Golden Mary
’
s
guns rang out. Eleven shots sounded, and so Wilkins knew that Copperfield had gotten the damaged gun back into service.

He turned his eyes to the enemy, and helped Bunsby with the helmsman, as they guided the ship below and behind the enemy. A blind spot from which the
Frederick’s
guns could not attack.

The enemy faced some problems. Several of the shots—Bates said eight hits—damaged the hull above them. And there, as he had hoped, a trickle of coal began to stream. “Let’s rise behind them, Mr. Bunsby, and then turn to a heading for Beaufort West again. We shall see if they follow us. Mr. Bates, Mr. Dawkins, have the men see to repairs. Mr. Gay, we are still at quarters.”

But over the next few moments, the tactic of crossing under the
Frederick
and then falling behind and below had worked. The enemy did not pursue when they broke to port. The battle—and the Germans—were finished.

Wilkins wiped the sweat from his brow. The Germans may not have been destroyed, but they had been defeated. He watched them steam slowly away. He could not see the vented steam from their balloons, but the slowing of the
Frederick
clearly illustrated the effect. They would need days to limp back to the Bantu lands that they tried to seize suzerainty over.

He waited a few more minutes until he was sure.

“Mr. Gay, you may stand down the men. Gentlemen, I think such a victory, and we have had one, means a double ration for the crew and for us; you must all join me in my cabins. I believe some of my grandfather’s famous punch is called for once again.”

Punch would make everything right.

Author Note:

I first encountered Mr. Micawber as portrayed by WC Fields. A charming interpretation. Since then, I discovered that his first name was Wilkins. Courtesy of an immigration officer, my last is Wilkin, no S. Then when this story came to mind, I discovered that the second most beloved comic figure in English literature is Wilkins Micawber, just behind Falstaff.

A story with a Steampunk flavor followed. It is thought that Micawber is modeled after Dickens’ own father, and that the original David Copperfield was born about 1820; so, here, in 1879, the grandsons of both men meeting up and serving the Empire seemed logical.

Styled after David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

Heat from the boilers made the sweat on Pia Hansen’s skin evaporate almost as soon as it left the ten-year-old girl’s pores. She moved quickly in the room. Prolonged exposure to the inhuman temperatures guaranteed a gruesome death—something even a child knew. With the tasks done, she raced from the room, only daring to breathe after the massive metal doors clanged shut. Her act guaranteed the city two more hours of power.

Pia wiped the grime from her hands on her dirty work clothes and picked up her clipboard. With the hard part of her duties finished, she turned her attention to an equally important job. The duty should never have gone to a child; laws prevented it. But on this night—New Year’s Eve—the law bent to the will of Lars Rasmussen.

New Year’s Eve—the one night of the year when the government looked the other way and allowed its subjects to escape the captivity of their homes past midnight. Soldiers and civilians alike spent months in preparation for their only chance to break curfew and experience a brief period of celebration and unabashed revelry.

New Year’s Eve—the one night the intense heat churning the bowels of the power plant barely satisfied the city’s need for energy, and no one knew more about harnessing the beneficial properties of fire than the Rasmussens.

To hear Lars tell it, he began working with steam technology before he could walk. His family carried the knowledge in their blood. The first Czar appointed his great-great-grandfather, the city’s first hydronic engineer, a century earlier. From that day, Rasmussens ran the power. Systems had evolved much since the first crude machines powered only mills and basic modes of propulsion. Now, the very existence of humanity itself owed everything to the proper balance of heat and water.

For eons, the gods jealously protected this knowledge, but the Rasmussen family forever deprived Deity of its greatest gift when Lars Rasmussen invented the great equalizer; he invented the Kalt Afdeling System.

No one knew exactly how Lars came up with the Kalt Afdeling System. Some said it came to him in a dream, yet others thought the man sold his soul to the devil himself in order to unlock the almost unlimited power the new system provided. Somehow, the idea came to him, and he realized that heat alone could not produce the kinds of power the growing populace needed. Heat worked fine for singular functions, but could one heat source run an entire city? No, it could not. For his society to survive, the city demanded more power, more energy.

Lars found the solution to the centuries-old problem, invented the system, and by so doing, forever changed the face of history, cementing his name as one of the great inventors of all mankind.

He ran the city’s power concern as its own kingdom, with himself as sovereign. A dictator in his private realm, Lars treated his employees much worse than the inhuman equipment that served the city. Those close to him knew never to cross him, for only his memory surpassed his evil nature. Netta Hansen never had a chance.

Netta’s husband never met their daughter. The soldier died while in the military. Without income, the pretty mother applied for various jobs, finally securing employment with the Rasmussen Power Company. The still-youthful woman toiled in the plant, earning barely enough to cover food and shelter costs for her struggling family. She would return home after many long hours, exhausted, but the sight of her daughter’s beautiful face washed away the memories of the plant. As long as they had each other, they were happy.

But those days lived only in the past, a past forever changed. Now Pia worked for Lars Rasmussen, a tyrant who forced her to risk death every time she entered the boiler room, a place so hot it only compared to the very caverns of Hell in intensity.

Only two more shifts tonight
, Pia thought, as she gathered her clipboard and walked from the torturous room. She could still feel the searing heat emanating from the door as she walked down the hall, finally stopping at a small metal panel near the floor. She knelt and turned a latch; the panel swung wide. She crouched, crawled into the space.

Once inside, Pia turned to a bank of twelve switches on a far wall, one switch for each one of the enormous boilers in the plant. Looking at the numbers on her clipboard, she clicked each switch to match the number she recorded while inside the inferno. She hurried the task and scampered from the room, closing the panel door as quickly as possible. She stood alone in the hall, a solitary figure in the massive power plant. Her face awash with anguish, thoughts of her mother came to her mind as she walked to her living quarters.

Years had passed since the days when Netta walked those same halls. Everything changed the day Lars Rasmussen met Netta Hansen. When she stepped outside during a rare break, he was immediately smitten. That very day, he hired her as his personal assistant.

The Spartan life Netta and Pia had shared disappeared forever. For the first time in her life, Netta could afford to buy her daughter more than the necessities. The humble family enjoyed the fruits of her many hours of labor.

With her new income, the two moved from their meager existence into a nice house, one where snow didn’t blow in from ill-fitted windows, and where the vermin remained outside. Pia came to know the feeling of a full stomach and a warm night’s sleep. Netta watched with grateful eyes as her daughter at first began to smile, and then laugh. Finally, Netta felt worthy of true happiness. The feeling did not last, due in part to Lars’s machine.