Chapter 15
Chapter
Fifteen
On their fourth morning, Fieran blinked awake at the sunlight splashing into his cabin through the porthole.
The past three days had been nearly blissful.
Lazily drifting over the Mongavarian countryside, occasionally changing direction to avoid Mongavarian patrols, aerodromes, and army bases.
Each evening, he and Pip would stay up late talking through his watch and dreaming about what a future together after the war might look like until Uncle Edmund arrived to take up his watch and the two of them drifted to their bunks to get some sleep.
Each day, Pip spent a lot of time tinkering on the engines and the other mechanical parts of the ship, often with Dacha, and each day she and Dacha grew less stilted with each other.
More than once, he’d caught them having an actual conversation as they talked over a mechanical problem they were trying to solve.
Fieran washed, dressed, and made his way down the passageway, stepping onto the bridge.
Dacha stood behind the wheel as the morning sunlight beamed bright through the bridge windows and glinted on the strands of his silver-blond hair. He glanced over his shoulder and nodded to Fieran. “Good morning, sason.”
“Morning.” Fieran drifted toward the chart table and checked their location. Everything seemed to be in order.
Dacha waved a hand to the bank of dials and gauges in front of the wheel. “We appear to be losing altitude, and I cannot seem to make us regain it.”
Fieran grimaced and headed for the dials, checking the altitude gauge.
“I suspected as much last night, but I was hoping I was wrong. I’m not an experienced airship pilot so for the first couple of days, I didn’t think anything of the fact that we kept losing altitude.
I could adjust the heat to the balloons and raise us again.
But now even that isn’t working without raising the heat to dangerous levels. ”
“What’s that about dangerous levels?” Pip strode into the pilot house carrying a tray piled with bread and hardboiled eggs for breakfast.
“Heating the gas balloons more to regain altitude.” Fieran tapped the glass top of the altitude dial. “Any ideas why we’d be slowly losing altitude?”
Pip set the tray on the corner of the chart table and crossed the room to join him, her mouth pinched in a flat line.
“There could be a small puncture in one of the gas balloons. Or possibly multiple of the balloons. Despite how careful everyone was, this airship might have been hit by some small pieces of shrapnel. Or there could be a leak in the steam pipes that run through the dirigible, causing some of the balloon not to get enough heat to provide lift.”
The Mongavarian airships were designed with two main methods of lift. Most of the gas balloons were filled with helium while a few near the bow and stern held regular air. For quick descents, these gas balloons were emptied, and for an ascent, they were refilled.
The air in the balloons and within the dirigible’s outer skin could also be heated using the steam pipes running between the balloons. More steam, more heat, and the airship rose. Cut off the steam, and the gas cooled, lowering the airship. This was better for smaller adjustments.
“The steam pressure gauge seems to be all right, but I’m not sure how accurate the gauges are here.” Pip nudged Fieran aside to take the primary spot before all the dials. “And if there was a leak in the steam, then we probably would have noticed. So I’m leaning toward a leak in the gas balloons.”
“Can it be fixed?” Dacha’s grip on the wheel had turned white-knuckled, even if his overall expression hadn’t changed.
“I might be able to track down the holes, but it could take a while. If I ever find them. If the holes are small, they will be nearly impossible to find in the miles of canvas gas balloons up there.” Pip shook her head and turned from the gauges to face them.
“And even if I find the leaks, it’s a multi-person job to patch them.
There’s a reason that maintaining the gas balloons takes a whole crew. ”
“The good news is that we aren’t losing altitude fast enough to jeopardize getting to Ludin.” Fieran grimaced again and turned to better face both Pip and Dacha. “But unless we fix the leak, this airship won’t be able to carry the rescued prisoners for long, if at all.”
Pip frowned and pointed upward. “There are rumors that Mongavaria has gotten desperate enough to start using hydrogen in their gas balloons despite the risk. Helium is rare, and you’ve destroyed a lot of their airships.”
Right. That meant any leak could potentially be pouring flammable gas into the dirigible where any spark or static could set it off. The gas balloons themselves were magically coated to prevent such things normally.
With a swallow, Fieran stuffed his magic deep within his chest. Best not to take any chances.
Dacha’s hard expression cracked with a grimace of his own. “This airship is sounding like an inadvisable risk of death.”
Uncle Edmund strolled into the pilot house, halting and glancing around at each of them. “I missed most of that. Which inadvisable risk of death are we talking about?”
“The airship slowly sinking. And, quite possibly, becoming a giant bomb filled with hydrogen gas.” Fieran shrugged and crossed his arms. “So…is attempting to find that leak the priority?”
Uncle Edmund halted by the chart table, then shook his head. “Perhaps it would be worth spending a few hours searching for the leak, but we’re nearing where my contacts reported strengthened Mongavarian air patrols. I’d like everyone on the bridge in case we run into trouble.”
Fieran shared a look with Pip.
She nodded back. “Fieran and I can spend this morning looking for the leak.”
Hopefully they could find it and patch it before any other trouble found them. Otherwise, they were sailing with a bomb strapped over their heads.
Pip clambered through the hatch onto the catwalk inside the dirigible. She rolled to her feet, getting out of the way as Fieran climbed up after her.
She peered around the inside of the dirigible. “Where should we start?”
“Maybe over there?” Fieran pointed upward and toward the stern. “Does that part seem a bit brighter than elsewhere?”
“Yes, it does.” As if sunlight was shining through a hole in the outer skin of the airship.
Pip set off down the catwalk in that direction.
Even though she was walking normally, her boots rang against the metal, the sound echoing hollowly in the cavernous space formed by the airship’s outer skin.
Fieran’s bootsteps, too, reverberated far too loudly.
It was eerily quiet and empty in here. On the airship she’d flown on before, this section had been bustling with activity. An airship was supposed to be alive with men and women, not this shell so stripped of life.
It was almost sad, even if this was an enemy airship. But if all went well, she and Fieran would fill this airship to the brim with rescued ogres and Alliance pilots. It wouldn’t feel so dead then.
The two of them climbed up several ladders, went down a few catwalks, and finally reached the upper balloons in the stern section.
“Well, there’s part of the problem.” Fieran gestured to the gashes ripped in the outer skin. None of the slices were that long, but there was a whole series of them, as if an explosion had blown shrapnel through the side.
The outer skin acted like its own air balloon, warmed and pressurized when all the hatches were dogged closed. While it wasn’t as crucial as the inner balloons, every little bit of lift made a difference.
Since the catwalk ran close to the side, Pip reached out and touched one of the tears. “We wouldn’t have noticed in the chaos of the hijacking. Nor could your dacha and uncle Edmund have seen them in the dark when they did their sweep looking for any enemy sailors left up here.”
Nor had she noticed either Fieran or his dacha disappearing to exercise on top of the airship. All of them had been far too busy, and when either of them had exercised, they’d run and leapt on the catwalks surrounding the gondola where they could be fetched easily if needed.
“At least there shouldn’t be too much risk of blowing up from hydrogen.” Fieran also poked at one of the holes. “It should have mostly vented out the rips.”
“Still, it’s a concern.” Pip positioned herself beside one of the rips then turned toward the inside, squinting as she tried to follow the possible trajectory of the shrapnel.
The balloon directly in front of her appeared somewhat more spongy than it should. And the thick canvas was peppered with blackened spots that were probably holes. The balloons on either side and below, too, looked like they might have been damaged.
Fieran leaned against one of the metal ribs next to her, his mouth pressed into a line. “That’s a lot of holes to patch.”
Pip could only nod as she took it in. “Do you have any idea how one goes about patching airship inner balloons?”
“Nope. Not a clue.”
Fieran gripped the end of the rope, bracing himself against the rails of the catwalk, as he held Pip suspended in the air above one of the air balloons. She was spreading the waxy substance over the tear she’d sewn shut.
After some searching, they’d found the maintenance closest where thick thread, needles, jars of a waxy goo, safety harnesses, and rope had been stored. Even better, there had been a training manual tucked onto a shelf, which included instructions on patching air balloons.
The two of them had sewn and patched the rips they could reach from the catwalks.
But when it came to the ones where someone needed to be harnessed up, it made more sense for Pip to be the one dangling in the air.
While she probably could hold Fieran, if properly rigged and secured, it was safer this way.
“And...that should do it.” Pip wiped her greasy hand on a rag she had tucked into a pocket.