Chapter 5 – IRS Sky Furnace

To Fredrik’s surprise, the Whiskey Flask crew soon put him to work. He knew he was being monitored, but they none the less allowed him to use any of the dangerous tools he needed to assist in the repairs. In the royal navy, they would never have trusted a prisoner with anything, let alone with a tool that could melt metal, let alone flesh. It seemed that Laverne, Lav as he had once called her, was more than just a marine. She was like a pirate captain, someone who both commanded the ship and fought on the lines. He could tell that everyone who came near her was in awe of her. It was the same trap he had once fallen into.

He used a hammer to bend sheets of iron into a curve then coated the inside with a paste which was made from a very dry flour mix and powdered firestone. The surface of the boiler was then moistened, and when the fire-putty made contact with it, it would partially melt both layers of metal and weld the two together. The process created pockets of smoke that could weaken the join, but it was a fast enough fix that would work so long as the boiler wasn’t pushed beyond normal use.

Not that he even knew what the boiler’s normal use was like, the float boiler, or possible boilers, was entirely unlike any he had seen before. The boiler he was familiar with was a single long ovaloid tube with two long water feed tubes connecting the main tank into the crystal rotators. It was nearly as long as the whole ship, and only the water supply was the larger object on the ship, with the two combined taking up nearly the entire middeck. The Flask’s boiler instead reminded Fredrik of a series of large ovens, the industrial ones he had seen at a bakery in a city, stacked next to each other. Only, where the bread would bake there were dozens of small pipes fed water. It still had a removable draw, where the firestone or wood would go in the oven, just instead of a single firestone, or maybe a pair of stones, each draw seemed to have hundreds of small stones in fluted pipes. The Flask had eight of the oven-like boilers, and they were each set on a platform which could be raised on one side, so that some of their upward force would be channelled into a forward force. While the stack of boilers took up less of the ship’s length, they were significantly taller, taking up space on both of the internal decks.

From what he gathered, the many small crystals burnt out fairly quickly, as he’d watched someone on the repair crew dump the blackened stones from one of the draws and slowly stack stones, weighing each crystal and recording the running sum. Fredrik had always heard that finding single firestones long enough to be fit into boilers was very rare, and thus very expensive, so he could imagine it would be significantly cheaper to run the shard-boilers, even if the crystals were burnt out so fast. It was basically running on the scraps that other ships threw away. He found the whole thing interesting, if somewhat arcane, and he just patched it up the way he was told to, just being extra hands for those who actually knew what they were doing.

He had worked up a sweat and stretched out the muscles that had gone stiff from hanging by the time the ship was able to get underway. Since the boiler could seep invisible super-heated steam, no one could be near the machines while they were active. Even just being in the room with them left all the workers with flushed red skin. With the boiler running, there was less of a rush on the remaining repairs, and as such he was freed from working and sent to speak with Lav.

He found her in a fairly small captain’s office, basically just a room with a tiny folding bed, desk, and storage. Unlike the designs of the Royal Navy, where the captain’s office was also the combined workspace for all of the officers, the Whiskey just gave that whole space to the officers and place a small amount of desk space in the captain’s bedroom. He found that there was a kind of compactness in the Whiskey’s design that he wasn’t used to. The Sunseed had been a small space, but it had never felt so cramped. The Whiskey employed a lot of folding furniture and half size corridors, which was largely needed to let it fit in extra support structures for the cannons. If the Sunseed felt like a cottage, the Whiskey felt like a factory designed for a child workforce.

Lav sat at the desk with a map rolled out, making notes in a logbook of some kind. When he had last known her, neither of them could write, yet now both of them could, though he imagined that her proficiency was greater than his own. In the village they had come from, only the mayor, the priest and a couple of merchants had been able to. There small worlds had grown so big, yet they somehow managed to meet. It was like some strange fate, forcing Fredrik to confront what he ran from.

After a few moments of quiet, in which Lav finished her work and in which Fredrik’s training would never let him interrupt, Lav locked her quill into the ink bottle with a twist lock and put the bottle into a folding draw built into the desk. She tucked her fringe neatly behind her ears as she looked up, framing her face with perfect symmetry. Her verdant eyes looked at him, into him, with words leaving her mouth with somehow both a casual ease and meticulous decision.

“It really is good to have you here, Fredrik,” she said with a twisted smile, “I never would have made it out of that town without you.”

He knew with absolute certainty that it was a lie. They both knew that nothing could have stopped her from leaving, at most anything he did would have only sped up her plans. For all he knew, his actions were all a part of her machinations, inspired by her insidious whispers. Yet, despite knowing that, hearing her welcoming voice was calming. It was as if something deep within him desired nothing more than to follow her plans. Like a dog who would fight and die for its owner.

“It’s certainly good to see you to, Lav. I can’t even begin to imagine how you ended up commanding a ship from the Aulin Republic.”

With that, she let out a light laughter. It was another sound that he found unfortunate comfort, knowing that it was filled with vaguely hidden condescension.

“Dear fool, this isn’t a Aulin’s ship. They are making ironclads, for sure, but those will already be outdated by the time they leave docks. No, this is a time of change. A time of chaos and opportunity. It is in times like this that the balances of power may change. The Royal Hilion Empire is a dying relic of the old world and the Aulin Republic is too new to do much more than play catch-up. No, this is a new age. The age of merchants and traders. It is time for the independent fleet of the North Barkett Trading Corporation to seize the skies for themselves.”

The passion that built as she spoke was like a fire. He recognized it and feared it, like he had grown to fear it long ago. In the lonely darkness of life, the bonfire of her passion attracted others like moths to flame. He could feel the spark start to take within him. If he let it, her charisma would enslave him, and he would find himself happily following her every demand. Before that could capture him, he focused his mind on what she said. The North Barkett Trading Corporation. It was a strange company. They were formed by a country, Tumarn, but the country didn’t back them up like an army, and instead acted as an independent investor that took a share of the profits in addition to taxes. The company had grown to be one of the largest trading companies in the known world, and they had bought out, or run out of business, most of their competition. Just to show their independence from Tumarn control, when Hilion wanted to invest, they were allowed to do so with no problems. That investment had allowed them to leverage the industrial power of the Empire. The production power that such a company could manifest would certainly rival most nations.

“So, Fredrik,” her voice went quiet, more than a whisper but less than a conversational volume, like a stage whisper or intimate chatter, “I trust that you’ll stay with me again. You wouldn’t try and leave me again, would you?”

It was a question. He knew it was a question. The tone rose at the end, so it had to be a question. Yet it felt like a threat. There was not the slightest hint of anything threatening about it, but he still knew it was a threat. From a height above the clouds, the ocean below would hit as hard as stone. That came to mind the moment refusing her passed through his mind.

“Of course, Lev. I’m not going anywhere.”

Deep within, he knew he had to find someone from the navy and pass along the warning. They had no idea what was brewing. They were worried about a rebelling colony while a dark storm was building strength in a distant sky.

“Good. Good. Well then. While you’re on board, I’ll have you stay by my side. You’ll have to retrain as a marine, so I’ll have an armour fitted for you when we go to resupply. I’ll have some papers drawn up when we get there, but we’ll have you take on the same noble house as me. If we’re introduced with the same name, people will believe we’re somehow related and I’ll be able to take you into more places. Yes. This will work,” she nodded to herself with confident satisfaction, not giving him the slightest chance to speak up, not that he would be so brave. “You’ll be Fredrik von Jermin when I get the papers done, so make sure you practise saying it.”

She spent some time after that organising his position on the crew. There were some who didn’t like someone in an enemy uniform walking around, but when Lav spread word of his name he began to hear wild rumours forming in their whispers. He was her brother, or maybe husband, who had worked as a spy or saboteur under Lav’s orders, and the Sunseed sending up a warning flare that gave away their position was his doing. They were at least partially right; he hadn’t found any way to prevent that loose stone from flying off and had been forced to dispose of it out the window. It was like salt in the wound of losing the ship, knowing that he had played such a major part in it sinking. He didn’t blame himself though. He blamed that idiot child who spilt the crystal in the first place. He could only hope that the young marine wasn’t one of the captured survivors, else he didn’t know what he would do. The crew’s positive impression was also improved when the repair crew mentioned the work he had done on the boiler. He hadn’t known it at the time, but there had been a genuine risk of super-heated steam breaking through and shredding flesh at any moment during the repairs, and his volunteering for such a dangerous job left a good impression. Once again, he felt like a puppet under Lav’s control.

He had spent the days the followed training with the marines. They were very different to what he was used to, and each was dedicated to their training. They each got up at first light, donned their armour without activating it, and started to run laps on the top deck. With no armour of his own, Fredrik instead carried a backpack filled with ballast weights. His load wasn’t as heavy as the armour, but it also wasn’t as well distributed or tied down. It certainly felt awkward when it came to doing push-ups and jumps. One training the body was done, they would still be the first group in for breakfast. The morning shift would arrive not long after to eat before replacing the night watch.

After eating, they would practise with their rifles. While he was shown how to use their new guns, leaver-action-repeaters or just repeaters as they called them, they didn’t have a spare for him, so he trained with his own breach rifle. He was impressed with just how much training they put into their work. Not just focusing on speed, not just focusing on accuracy, but focusing on adapting to what the situation required. In just the couple days it took to leave the royal navy’s patrol routes they had already trained more than he’d ever seen the Sunseed’s marines train. It left him feeling exhausted but accomplished. When it came time to sleep, he had a bunk immediately outside Lav’s room, fitting for her personal guard, and he slept soundly despite his worries.

As another day started and he went out to the deck to start the day’s workout, he saw something in the distance that the rest of the marines were likewise focused on. It was clearly an airship, his mid could tell him that much, but everything else about it didn’t quite make sense to him. It was simply too big; too oddly shaped. It was like someone had taken four six-deck ships of the line, fused them in pairs, stern to stern, and filled in the gap between the two wooden tubes with a series of metal catwalks and a large wooden box, that was maybe eight decks large, if it had any decks at all. The outer facing sides were fitted with twenty medium sized cannon turrets, while the inner facing hulls had their cannons removed to make room for the catwalks. While the firepower seemed ludicrous compared to what an S-Class ship could bring to bear, it was still less power than an ordinary ship of the line. If anything, the behemoth was underpowered to the point of being mostly unprotected. As he watched the ship, contemplating what its purpose could be, he heard a voice suddenly from behind him.

“It’s the IRS Sky Furnace,” Lav’s said, “the first of our salvaged resupply ships.”

She hadn’t really been speaking to him, more just speaking, but the way she could move through the ship without making a sound was ghostly, like she was some ill-spirit haunting the vestal. Despite being the captain, she still trained each day with the marines. She wouldn’t always have time for the shooting practice, but she was sure to do the workout. Her lean body was tone and as hard as the ship’s own iron.

“When the ships of the line were being decommissioned, replaced with new designs, it was felt that it would be a waste to just strip them for wood. So, they were salvaged and bound together with some new iron-based structures, all to form out biggest supply carrier. With the techniques for resupplying while in the air that they’ve developed, the Furnace can keep a whole convoy fuelled at once.”

As the Whiskey Flask drifted ever closer to the Furnace, its size seemed ever more daunting. Its cannons tracked them, ready to sink them the moment they did anything suspicious. A hemispherical mirror the size of a person was lifted out onto the deck, and a set of vertical metal blinds were fixed over it. A brightly shining firestone was inserted into the back of the mirror and it was pointed at the Furnace. Before long, the Furnace shone a light of their own towards the Flask. The crewmen operating the mirror shut and opened the shutters in a pattern Fredrik didn’t recognise and the Furnace responded in turn. The cannons then lowered to indicate they were no longer considered a threat, and a metal crane, painted a vibrant orange that contrasted with the sky, folded out from the top of the Furnace. Alongside the crane, a pully system pulled out a thick hose like an accordion.

A little while later, a little less than half an hour, the two ship finally met up. The disparate gap in the two ship’s size was made clear when they were next to each other, as Flask could fit within the Furnace several times over. The escaping vapour coming out of the Furnace’s flumes were like whole clouds. The crane had four wires and hooks dripping from it, and the ship’s hands set about connecting those hooks to four loops on the hull. The tension on the wire took up until the Flask was neutrally buoyant, keeping itself afloat but its weight was under the control of the Furnace. The hose was connected to a port in the deck, and Fredrik could hear the sloshing of water as the ship’s supply of clean water was filled. A wide gangplank was lowered down to their deck, and rails were pulled up from their place, folded under the plank. He could see men on the Furnace connect wired clips on the rail, connected to a harness, as they crossed down the planks with boxes of supplies.

A man in a brightly coloured silken outfit, with an array of strange patterns and shapes, came down the plank with arms open and raised. On top of the brightly coloured outfit, he wore a tiny woollen vest that was coloured white with a black trim. Fredrik hadn’t seen clothes like that before, but he had heard stories of absurd outfits in Tumarn and Mastwith, though he had chalked many of those stories up to exaggeration. The Vibrant clothes seemed to distract from the strangeness of the man himself. He was the tallest man that Fredrik had ever seen, and not by a short margin, and his long hair was tied low in a ponytail and dyed as pale white as desert bones. As he noticed that, he started to notice that many of the Furnace’s other crewmembers were like likewise tall and white haired. Only, while the others had sun-browned skin of a sailor, the brightly clothed man had skin every bit as white as his hair.

“Dear child,” the man yelled out when he was nearly at the end of the plank. “It is so very good to see you made it out of there. I’d invested far too much in you for you to short me so soon.”

“Dear sponsor,” Laverne yelled back, affection in her tone. “How could I die without repaying my loans. It would set a bad example for those who owe me.”

They exchanged a firm handshake, then the man passed vests with clips to both her and him.

“A strange guard you’ve picked up there, child, I hope he won’t be trouble.”

“Far from it, sponsor, without him I would have never been able to afford your loan.”

The man bellowed a healthy laugh that reminded Fredrik of the late doctor of the Sunseed, and directed them to follow him up the ship, talking as they walked, yelling to be heard over the wind and the ships’ boilers.

“You’re lucky you came when you did. We’re meeting up with a fleet later today and we would be so full up that you would be doing an insecure fuelling, or even a parallel fuelling, depending on how many of the fleet’s ships survived. Your crew might be good, but the Flask wasn’t really built for that kind of thing. When will you sell it off, take out another loan, and upgrade? Your reputation is more than good enough for enough credit to buy an armoured frigate. Certainly, you can do much better than that old gunboat.”

As they walked onto the top deck of the Furnace, they immediately went down a stairwell into the ship below. The deck had been covered with crates and cranes and a mess of hoses and wires, and Fredrik couldn’t even imagine navigating his way through it all. Despite the Furnace being made from ships of the line, it wasn’t the lavish affair that those ships tended to be. They were carved with artistry and flourishes, and carefully maintained to always radiate the power of the nations they served. The Furnace, however, was perfectly practical, maintaining everything to the minimum standard that wouldn’t interfere with functionality. If there was space and weight for decoration, then there was space and weight for more cargo. In some way, the dedication to purpose that it showed was admirable, even if it wasn’t a purpose Fredrik could understand the need for.