The train screamed at the top of its pitch, engine taxed almost beyond capacity.
“Any more and we won’t make those turns,” Dusty cautioned Soap, who nodded his agreement.
The girls kept shoveling.
“We don’t want to blow her, and we don’t want to lose the rails!” yelled Soap.
So they had to relax their efforts, even though Dimity reported that the dirigible, while not gaining on them, was keeping pace.
It was a challenging afternoon. Mademoiselle Geraldine’s prepared its young ladies for unusual situations, but it did not prepare them for heavy labor. The very idea! Even as intelligencers, actually working was not expected of women of standing. Now that Sophronia, Dimity, and Sidheag were acting drudges, they didn’t even have time to stop for tea. Not that there was any tea.
As the sun began to set and the moon rose, now on the waning side of full, they realized the tender was empty.
It wasn’t a surprise, they knew it was coming, but now they had to face reality.
They fed the boiler more slowly, eking out the last of the reserves that Bumbersnoot hadn’t consumed, drawing out the inevitable.
“The flywaymen are gaining on us,” reported Dimity.
An hour or so later, “They’re on our tail now.”
Half an hour after that, “Cannons are up.”
And then, “Can’t see them anymore, they must be right on top of us.”
A boom sounded.
“They’re firing!” said Dimity.
“Yes, dear. We can hear that,” said Sophronia.
Nothing happened; the train continued to clatter along. The cannonball must have missed. There was a long pause while the dirigible reloaded. Soap gave the engine all the throttle they had, but the boiler was cooling regardless.
Another boom sounded.
This time Dimity didn’t report the occurrence. But the train did shake dramatically. It shuddered and then began to squeal as if the brake were being applied.
Soap said, “We’re dragging something against the line. One of the back carriages might be off the tracks. It could derail the rest of us if we aren’t careful.” He let the train slow further.
Sophronia said, “We’ll have to decouple them. Only solution. Should have thought of it sooner; dragging less weight, we would have used less coal.”
“Too late now,” said Soap.
“Never!” said Sophronia, readying her hurlie.
“You can’t go out there,” objected Dimity. “They’re shooting cannons at us!”
“One cannon, and it takes them time to reload, not to mention recover the height of the airship and reseat the recoil guard. I have ten minutes.” Before she’d finished her explanation, Sophronia leapt and grabbed the top of the doorjamb, swinging to climb up onto the cab roof. She might have been more graceful had they not been moving fast. As it was, she bumped her shin.
“Sophronia,” reprimanded Dimity at the top of her voice, “you’re too impetuous. You’ll get yourself killed!”
It was a lot easier to run along the top of the carriages and jump from one to the next when she was moving in the opposite direction to the train. As soon as she’d crossed the freight carriages, she saw the problem. The second-to-last carriage, the one in front of the coach that held the airdinghy, had detached partly from the transmitter’s carriage. The airdinghy was tilted oddly, because half of the coach below had been blown away.
Sophronia crouched on the roof of the transmitter to evaluate the situation. Then, trying not to worry over the danger, she hooked the grapple part of her hurlie into the top edge of the freight carriage and lowered herself down the side. Partly standing on the coupler base, and partly dangling from one arm, she examined the coupler at her feet. Bent double, she was grateful she’d chosen to leave off her stays.
One of the holding pegs had fallen out, and its broken chain was dragging on the track. The coupler was linked only halfway as a result. The drag on the line that Soap had described must be coming from farther back, probably that last coach.
Sophronia worked to free the second peg, to lose the dead weight of those last two passenger carriages. It was wedged tight as a new glove. It didn’t help that she had only one hand to apply to the task, her other being occupied holding her steady, dangling from the hurlie. She also had no way to brace herself. She banged at the peg with the heel of her hand. Nothing.
She pulled out a vial of perfume oil and tried adding that, to grease it loose.
Still nothing, and now her hand was slippery.
She swung about and kicked at the peg hard. All that seemed to do was bruise her foot. Her various weapons weren’t going to work. She needed brute force and she hadn’t anything about her person.
It wasn’t in her nature to give up. She climbed up the freight carriage and ran as quickly as she could back along the top of the train.
Time had run out.
Behind her came cannon fire. She flattened herself to the top of the carriage.
The train shook and she heard the ghastly noise of metal and wood rending asunder. The train slowed to a crawl.
Sophronia looked behind and saw that the last carriage was now a mess of wood and plush interiors dragging behind. Their poor little airdinghy, which had served them so well and proudly, was part of the wreckage.
Queen Victoria’s old military floaters were able to take the weight of only four cannonballs. It was one of the reasons they’d been discontinued. That meant the flywaymen behind them only had one more shot.
Sophronia had just enough time while they reloaded to do what needed to be done.
She jumped to her feet and dashed on, ending on the roof of the cab.
She stuck her head down over the edge into the engine room.
“Soap, I need you!”
“I’m a little busy right now, miss.”
“Miss?” said Dusty, confused by the gender switch.
“I’ll explain later,” reassured Sidheag.
“Let Sidheag drive,” said Sophronia to Soap.
“I’m helping Dusty!” protested Sidheag.
“Then let Dimity drive. This will only take a moment.”
Dimity’s face went owl-like in awe at her new responsibility. Nevertheless, she gamely stepped forward. Soap reluctantly relinquished his position.
“Just keep this gauge here at that mark, see? And this one between those two lines? Got it, miss?”
“I think so, Mr. Soap.”
“Another miss?” objected Dusty.
“You can’t tell me that one surprises you?” protested Sidheag.
“Are you a miss, too?” Dusty was still gamely shoveling.
But Soap had swung himself out and climbed up on the roof next to Sophronia. They had other things to repair than Dusty’s sensibilities.
“This better be important, miss.”
“Come on! They only have one more shot.”
“How you figure that?”
“With airships, weight is weight, they can’t have redesigned it that much. That’s an old model. It can only carry as much as it did in the old days.”
“If you say so.”
Sophronia was already running, crouched low, along the roofs of the carriages back toward the problem coupler. Soap followed gamely. They reached the edge of the freight carriage unscathed. Soap was not quite so sure-footed as Sophronia, but then she was beginning to feel that this was her native environment, running over the roofs of a moving train.