“Orders from the helm.”
He was halted from saying more by cannon blast from under the keel. The ship dipped into a steep yaw, slamming him and Lenore both against the gondola’s undamaged wall. A high unearthly shriek made Lenore cover her ears, even beneath her protective cap. Mr. Jupiter did the same, his craggy features drawn in until they were a grimacing map of rutted roads. The ship leveled and swung sharp to port. Lenore gripped the hand bar bolted to the wall to keep from losing her feet and tumbling against the engine. Jupiter held her arm in a vise grip that numbed her fingers.
“Are you well?” he shouted. She nodded. He pointed in the general direction of the exposed sky. “That’s why we’re still spinning. There’s a horrific just about on top of us.”
She nodded, understanding. Stop the engine and propeller, and they’d lose not only speed and power but maneuverability. TheTerebellum’sformidable arsenal didn’t work alone. She still needed to get out of the way and to do so she needed all her engines running.
“Why do you need me?” she asked.
Mr. Jupiter raised one hand and wiggled his fingers before shouting again. “The opening to reach the splinter is too small for any of us to get in there and pry it out. We need someone with small hands who knows the engines and don’t need a lot of instruction. That’s you.”
Lenore’s stomach lurched as she turned to look at the crankshaft and gearbox, the spinning rotation of a hundred metal teeth that notched and turned tooth over tooth in constant motion. They’d stop the engine so she could dislodge and retrieve the splinter. She tried not imagine the impossible scenario of the engine somehow restarting on its own. Those teeth would chew her hand off, pulp it into a bloody hunk of crushed bone and shredded muscle. Her fingers twitched at the gruesome thought.
For one moment, she wished herself back home, safe in the parlor, drinking tepid tea and listening to her Aunt Adelaide abuse their pianoforte. She’d hated every second of it, craved adventure and freedom from the strictures of stifling society.
Be careful what you wish for.
She nodded to Mr. Jupiter. “Whenever you’re ready.”
A shout traveled down the shaft. The master mechanic slipped past her to stare up at his junior still hovering at the top of the shaft. He nodded and returned to stand next to her. “The helm’s taking the engine down now.”
“What about the horrific?”
He grinned. “Seems that bonekeeper might have made a kill shot. The monster fell back into the rift.”
Lenore closed her eyes and tried not to think of Nathaniel. All of her focus needed to stay here, in this tight, damaged, vulnerable gondola.
She and Mr. Jupiter waited several tense minutes. The engine’s noise abruptly changed, slowed and finally whirred to a stop on a mechanical exhalation. The slowing rotation hum of the propeller followed until it was just the wind and the endless boom and vibration of gun and cannon from theTerebellumand the other ships around her.
They waited even longer for the engine to cool to a temperature that wouldn’t cook her hand off her wrist. The mechanic tapped his foot impatiently. “We’re an easy target while that engine is down.”
“I’ll be quick, sir,” she said, eyeing the spot in the gearbox where the splinter jammed the gears.
She eased her hand inside. The metal was still warm, but not so much that it burned her skin. The blunt teeth scraped her knuckles, pressing shallow depressions into her arm as she reached for the shrapnel piece. Sweat poured down her torso under her clothes and trickled down her neck.
Her fingertips gripped the splinter, earning a slice across her index finger for her efforts. “Got it!” she called to the mechanic. She growled under her breath as the metal, wedged hard against the gear, refused to dislodge. “Bloody hell,” she snapped. She didn’t have all day for this. Neither did theTerebellum.
Blood from her wounded finger made the metal slippery, but with more cursing and careful joggles of the splinter first one way and then the other, she managed to pry it loose. Mr. Jupiter’s whoop of triumph when she straightened to show him her prize made her grin. No bigger than a bodkin tip on a practice arrow, the sliver had nearly caused a catastrophe. That something so small could cause such problems!
She turned the sliver over to Mr. Jupiter who pocketed it with an approving nod before returning to the shaft. This time she heard him clearly when he ordered the junior to relay the command to start up the engine again. Both he and Lenore wilted in relief when the powerplant coughed back to life and set the propeller in a proper rotation speed. He grinned and shook her hand. “Good work, lass.”
“Thank you, sir.” She might have been more elated if it weren’t for the knowledge that a man she loved and thought dead was once again playing a game of suicide on the weapons platform. But she didn’t have the luxury to worry. She climbed the shaft ladder back to the hull, returned the junior mechanic’s cap to him with a word of thanks and raced back to the sick bay.
Voices crackled over the speaking tubes from the control room, following her as she made her way to the keel corridor—Nettie’s, strong and sure, her boatswain’s equally commanding, a few stray remarks overheard behind the commands, one that made Lenore pause and clench her fists until her nails dug into her palms.
“That bonekeeper is a crackin’ good shot! Just blew away two of that horrific’s eyes!”
“Please,” she prayed—to God, to Nathaniel, to Fate, to anyone or anything who’d listen. “Give me a chance. Please give me a chance to say yes.”
There were two crewmen in sickbay when she arrived, one with minor wounds, another clutching an arm split down to the bone by the sharp edge of a broken girder. The doctor tended to him as his assistant dealt with the other. Lenore doused her injured hand in carbolic solution, wrapped her finger in a stretch of gauze and took over the assistant’s tasks so he could help with the more seriously injured man.
She’d just finished cleaning her patient’s last cut when the deafening barrage of artillery fire suddenly halted. The silence hung weightier than a lead bell on a thin rope. Lenore caught herself holding her breath. She glanced at the others in the room. Like her, they didn’t breathe.
Nettie’s voice, still so calm and so sure, carried a lilt of triumph. “All hands stand down.”
Static cheers poured out of the speaking tubes and erupted in the sick bay. Lenore’s patient impulsively embraced her and just as quickly apologized, though his grin continued to stretch across his face.
A wave of relief, so strong it nearly knocked her to her knees, crashed into her. Her shoulders slumped, and her eyes filled with tears. “Nathaniel,” she whispered. Her leg muscles tensed with the urge to bolt from sickbay and race for the weapons platform.
