The Doomsday Vault Read Online Free Page B

with fear and dread. He counted eight, and there were probably more that he couldn’t see.
    â€œ What’s out there, Graf? ”demanded Captain Naismith’s voice through the speaking tube at Old Graf’s elbow.
    â€œPirate gliders, Captain,” Old Graf yelled back, flipping his lenses back down. “I mark at least a dozen.”
    â€œWhich means probably twice that. Shit. Shit, shit, shit. Can you see the main cruiser?”
    â€œNot—yes! Welsh privateer, probably with a letter of marque.” He squinted through the lenses. “Gondolier class. Semirigid.”
    â€œ All hands prepare for battle! ”boomed the captain. “Drop ballast compression and take us up to fifteen hundred feet. We have two dozen gliders coming in. They’ll try to get over the netting to attack the decks, so I want everyone who can swing a sword or fire an air pistol up in the ropes! Mr . Thomas, prepare to jettison the cargo. Master Ennock, get your ass down to the gondola, and I mean now!”
    â€œBetter hurry, boy,” Old Graf said as Gavin pulled the helmet off. “He won’t appreciate it if you’re slow.”
    Gavin shoved his fiddle into its case and ran for it. He skittered down the ladder to the main deck, which swarmed with activity. Airmen boiled out of the hatchways, rushing to ready the ship for battle. Ports flipped open along the hull, exposing flechette and harpoon guns. Men in white and gray leather manned the pumps that forced ballast air out of certain ballonets inside the Juniper ’s envelope and inflated other ballonets with more hydrogen, allowing the ship to rise. Other men swarmed into the netting, climbing toward the envelope with compressed air pistols and cutlasses of tempered glass—only a fool used gunpowder or sparking steel near several tons of explosive hydrogen.
    Gavin ran to the center of the deck and slid down the rails of another ladder polished by years of use, pausing only to drop his fiddle off in the crew quarters, where he stuffed it under a blanket and prayed no pirate would find it. Then he ran back to the ladder.
    The Juniper was an American ship of American design. A web of wrist-thick ropes hung from an enormous, cigar-shaped envelope of gas and cradled what looked like a sailing ship with the masts removed. Fastened to the bottom of the ship and looking a bit like a glass bubble with a wooden bottom was the navigation gondola, where Pilot and the captain spent most of their time. Gavin dropped past two decks and out the bottom of the ship into the gondola.
    The floor was solid wood, but the sides of the gondola were made of glass to give a good view in all directions, and now Gavin could see the gliders skimming ominously toward the Juniper. Speaking tubes sprouted from every cranny, and pigeonholes held rolled-up charts and instruments. Captain Naismith stood at the helm, his fingers white on the wheel spokes and his plain features tense. His dark blue captain’s coat with its gold buttons and epaulets rustled not at all, and his hair remained hidden beneath his cap. Captain Naismith was a young man, not yet thirty, and he dealt with the grumblings of the much older men put under his command by expecting strict discipline from everyone, including himself.
    Beside him stood Pilot. Gavin had never learned his name—the pilot of an airship was always just called Pilot. He was perhaps forty, with a shock of wheat blond hair. At the moment, he was bent over a tableful of charts, his sextant clutched in one hand.
    â€œSir,” Gavin said.
    â€œMaster Ennock,” Captain Naismith said, “you were thirteen years old the last time we were attacked by privateers.”
    â€œFourteen, sir. Two days after my birthday.”
    He waved this aside. “You wanted to fight, but I ordered you to hide in the cargo hold.”
    Gavin nodded. That had been a dreadful day. He remembered crouching among the crates and barrels