The Guns Above by Robyn Bennis

Author:Robyn Bennis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

10

MISTRAL ROSE THROUGH the morning fog. As she slid back from Durum’s mast, the wind clawed at Bernat’s eyes and he fumbled with his goggles. The wash from Mistral’s new airscrews—four of them, each with four relatively stubby blades—had turned the hurricane deck into a roiling tempest worthy of its name. The fog streamed in turbulent rivers past the deck.

“Is it just me, or is it a bit windier than last time?” he asked, shouting over the noise.

“You have a true talent for detecting the obvious,” Josette said. She looked up the companionway and called, “Pass the word to Gears: full power forward.”

The whine of the steamjack grew higher and louder, and Mistral leapt forward in a lurch that made Bernat stumble. When he regained his footing, he shot Josette a sour look and said, “If that was retaliation for my insightful comments, then perhaps I’ll just stop making them.”

Her eyes were jumping back and forth between the foggy view forward and the kinemeter above her head, but she spoke without looking at him. “It was retaliation.”

Amid the cluster of instruments above the captain’s station, Bernat saw the kinemeter needle climb through fifteen knots. “Did you get a chance to see your mother last night?” he asked.

That comment took her attention away from the instruments, if only for a moment. “I was too busy seeing to the refit.”

“Did you get any sleep?” he asked.

“Thank you for your concern,” she said, “but I have a mother too many as it is.” The airspeed rose above twenty knots. The corners of Josette’s mouth twitched upward, threatening an actual smile. Her eyes were now locked on the instruments.

Bernat watched the airspeed reach twenty-five knots and keep going. In this soup of fog, though, the acceleration didn’t seem real. The instruments and the blast of air whipping across the hurricane deck were the only indications of speed, for now the deck underneath felt perfectly stable under this steady acceleration.

As they passed through twenty-seven knots, Mistral burst from the cloud cover into a vast, empty dome of purple and blue. Ahead of them, the morning sun was still below the clouds, visible only as a ruddy brightness on the horizon that shot a dozen beams of sunlight into the heavens. Below them, a carpet of clouds stretched to the ends of the world.

“My God,” Bernat said. “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

Josette grinned—actually grinned. “Isn’t it, though?” she asked, but her eyes were not on the sky or the clouds. She hadn’t taken them off the instruments.

Bernat tore his eyes from the heavenly sight outside to look at the kinemeter. It was twitching past thirty knots and somehow still increasing. It stopped at thirty-two.

“Level her off,” Josette ordered.

As the steersman brought Mistral out of her climb and into flat, level flight, the airspeed needle slid even further, to settle down at thirty-three knots.

“Six knots faster than her old speed at full power,” Josette said. She let out a little laugh and shook Bernat so hard it made him dizzy.

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