Abominations (42 page)
Since the crystal looked to be tied down and the cradle for it, which seemed to be part of the airship, looked to be secured, Smitty got her a rag and some polish and set her to cleaning the brass work, figuring that Gloria would be happier seeing them doing something when she got in than if they were sitting around. That, the red haired man explained, would be important, because if Gloria wasn't a little peeved when she got back it would only be because she was livid. Smitty didn't blame her.
“Even if the Admiral and Gloria say Darnell just gets scutt work for a while, he's getting a beating. Those crystals cost a lot, sure, but if it fell it could have injured someone. Probably not me, since I was on the slipping side and knew to get out of the way, but Meter was two places up and that would probably have cost him a foot or at least a broken leg. Every man on the other side was in danger too. They won't let that go.”
He explained how polishing worked, using a small cloth to apply the waxy cream, which didn't smell very good to Gwen, on the brass, making sure to keep it off the surrounding wood, then using the larger rag to scrub the brass clean of the polish, using small circular movements. It all looked pretty shiny to her, but frequent attention was probably what kept it all looking nice, so she decided to do a good job of it, if she could. If nothing else it was learning a new skill, and that never hurt in the long run, she was finding.
He handed her three fresh rags, small towels really and told her where they went when they were all covered with the cleaner, as well as where to get more of them. Then he did a small section of brass railing, a bar that ran along the wall and then had her do the next bit while he watched, the whole process taking about two minutes.
“Good. Just keep that up and try not to miss anything if you can. We have time right now, so speed's good, but don't slack off on quality, alright? I'll be on the other side, doing the same thing, if you run into problems.”
She'd been working for about ten minutes when Gloria came by, looked at her work for about five seconds, and grunted.
“Smitty did something right, set right to work without being told. Maybe I should get him someone to train full time. When you get done with this, get Smitty to show you to the engine room. The Admiral wants you to get an introduction to propulsion systems for some reason. So hurry here and get your ass in there. We'll need a couple hours to go over everything. The trip out should only take about three. I'll give you forty minutes to finish this. Go.” The woman smiled at her then, but not in a way that said she was joking about the time limit.
The railing ran about the length of a football field, maybe a bit more, probably meant for crew to grab during strong winds or something, rather than decoration, even though it did look nice to her. Gwen scrambled, her arm getting sore from the unaccustomed motions about halfway through and starting to burn shortly after that. Not an unusual feeling to her, some of the drills she'd run in various martial arts classes had taught her that this kind of burn could just be pushed through, as long as you didn't give in mentally. Given her old physical problems it was a lesson she'd really had to learn. Sure, at a certain point the muscle would just give out, but there would be a long time between the start of pain and when you really couldn't go on anymore.
She got to the end of the rail, pushing as fast as she could, just shy of forty minutes and told Smitty what Gloria had said.
“Right. Let me check your rail first and see if you did it right. Since you're doing what I say, it's my ass if you messed it up.” He walked the rail with her, stopping twice to polish small areas that looked a little rough.
“Not bad. You could probably walk my side and find as many missed places. There are always spots that get missed no matter how careful you are. That's why you always have to double check everything on a ship, no matter how unimportant it seems. Better yet, have someone else check it for you. Fresh eyes find new things. Let's get the gear stowed and get to Gloria then, before she comes back to scream at you for being too slow.” Grinning, he walked quickly to the cloth bags in the front of the room where everything got put, each thing in its own bag, then tied in place on a deep shelf that held many other bags, all marked with tags saying what they held.
Smitty in the lead, they pushed into a hallway that had three doors, hatches she remembered him having called them. Pointing he listed them off quickly for her.
“Port side hatch there is the head, the restroom,” he said gesturing to the left. “Starboard has the stairs to the upper decks. You won't need those being loading crew, unless the boss wants you to polish the wood and brass or swab the decks above. Being a girl they may also try to rope you into taking coffee to the Captain. Technically not your job, but being the lowest person here you get that kind of thing. That's pretty much the same everywhere, right?”
He moved through the center hatchway, announcing that it led forward, which seemed strange to her, since it was obviously in front of her, until she realized it had the other part of the ship's working areas, called forward. Luckily she hadn't said anything about it out loud.
“Engineering on this boat is all the way forward. Which is called the bow, just like on a water boat. Machine shop port, galley starboard. I'll walk you in.”
Engineering was oddly quiet. Gwen had expected large machines clanking and coal being shoveled, even though she knew, intellectually, that this thing wasn't steam powered. All the brass and wood made this whole world feel like it should be. Instead of working with giant wrenches, Gloria sat at a large workbench with a complicated device in front of her. It looked like something from a child's toy rocket, but made for a huge kid, it was about the size of a large garbage can and roughly the same shape.
“Curly, good of you to join me and...” She pulled out a pocket watch, flipped the cover and looked at it closely. “I'll be damned, not even late!”
The beefy woman turned to the thin redheaded man.
“So, how'd she do Smitty?”
The man nodded and gave a slight smile.
“Pretty well. Good attention to detail, even on a boring task, didn't ask why it had to be done, even though it already looked clean. After you set her a time limit, she worked fast and didn't stop, which we all know takes some doing when you're green. Seems to be paying attention and doesn't natter on endlessly.” He shrugged then. “That's all I've had time for, except the stuff earlier, where she saved my ass, so she's doing good in my book. I saw we keep her and use Darnell as the new bow decoration. We can dress him up as a bird with a little tar and some feathers.”
The woman kept working on what she had in front of her while she spoke.
“Heh, yeah, your ass and mine too. Alright, Curly, next test then, can you charge a crystal at all?”
Gwen nodded, hoping that charging the little crystals at home the day before would be enough practice to do whatever the older woman had in mind.
“Right. Let's see what you can do then, help me get this out...” She pointed, showing that she wanted Gwen on the other side of the bench, used a screwdriver to pull open a plate on the side that ran about sixty percent of the length of the larger tube. Inside sat a large crystal pack, about the size of both her legs put together and nearly as long. They pried it out of the housing and set it on the work surface next to a big silver cylinder.
“This is a maneuvering thruster. Normally I'd just send the crystal out to be charged, like we do with most of them, but this conked on us just after we got out of the hangar. When we're in the air, we can do it without pissing off the Chargers Union. We may or may not need it for air docking, depending on what the Merriment has left. Given they're a Terrace Line craft, I'd say we can't count on much. Anyway, the Westmorland Captain said you could do this, and while I could, I'm needed to go over the rest of this piece while we have it out, to make sure it didn't clog the water valve or outer vent system. That can happen if the crystal goes while under heavy load, even though it shouldn't be the case here. Smart people always check anyway. Have a seat and get to work. Let me know if you can't do it within three hours.”
A high bench, big enough for two people to sit on without touching, gave her someplace to sit while she worked on the crystal. She focused on the metal plate on the end, trying to push as hard as possible, even though she didn't know if that would make this go any faster or not. Every few seconds her attention would try to waiver, but she knew enough not to let that fluster her and to just keep coming back to what she tried to do. Soon she lost track of what the other woman did next to her. She occasionally noticed the odd thump or bump coming from that direction, but it didn't distract her. It reminded her briefly of when she was a kid and her mom would try to talk to her while she read a book or watched a television show, but nothing would get through until she started yelling.
After a while, it felt like twenty minutes or so, but she didn't know for sure, the crystal started pushing back. She tested it again, to make sure that it really had been filled. Smithy's words about double checking on the ship made sense to her. She didn't want to mess something up and have that turn out to be a fatal mistake or something.
“Done,” Gwen said, her voice sounding flat.
Gloria glanced over at her, a skeptical look on her face.
“Really?” Instead of trying to move the heavy crystal again, she gestured for Gwen to scoot off the bench and maneuvered herself into position so that she could check it for herself. Gwen worried for a second that she'd messed up or something, since the other woman grunted slightly at what she found.
“Damn. No wonder the Admiral wants you shown propulsions. Fine, we'll start with what's in front of us.” Without waiting for a reaction, Gloria pointed to the maneuvering thruster and started to explain.
“This is a steam rocket, as you probably already know, unless you went to school in another world or something. The crystal you just charged provides energy, a radiative turns it to heat, at this point here,” a big finger pointed at a small silver tube of metal about a half inch in diameter. “Inside this is a copper mesh that also acts as a heat transfer, water hits it and explodes, the steam gets carried along, through here and down this path to the release.” This all got indicated with a tap to each area.
She went on to explain how each piece worked, then quizzed Gwen on what she'd just said while she put the whole thing back together. After they got the heavy crystal back into place, Gloria called four of the other men in to help put the thruster where it belonged.
Instead of anything fancy or magical, the whole unit just got placed in a hole in the wall, what looked like a cupboard to Gwen, then small handles were turned which apparently moved the large unit outside the hull, deploying it for use.
“Curly, you're with me. Smitty, check the upper decks for wear. Groundling, you're in charge of the others, ten minute breaks then back to work. I'll be in the motivator compartment if you need me.”
The motivator, which turned out to be a giant stone cube that wanted to move forward when enough magical energy got applied to it, had a tiny crawlspace underneath it, filled with cables and heavy wooden beams.
“We keep a pretty tight ship here, but sometimes you find rats and mice, bugs and whatnot down here. If you see anything, try to kill it and clean it out. Otherwise things will try to chew the cables. Let's go then.”
Gloria got on all fours and led the way into the dark space below the heavy block. A small light, a glow lamp, turned on each time they got within a few feet of it, they seemed to be stationed on every support beam, one on each side.