Year of our Lord 1887
It was somehow colder than it was in the mountains.
The air was heavier, somehow, and yet made painfully light by the biting cold. It scraped down their throats like knives, slivering through the weave of their coats and lodging itself there, a presence so unyielding not even their blazing glowworms could shake it off. It ballooned their lungs like the envelopes of their airships and reddened their faces, blistering in the wind.
Joseph puffed out his cheeks, slowly pushing his breath through his pressed lips.
They had foregone their thick furs a long time ago, relieving themselves from the great heaviness that they had dragged with them ever since the fall of the Old World. It was a reminder from the time they first arrived at New London, worthless rabble clutching the memories of those who did not make it close to their chests, like a burden, a legacy to uphold.
When the cold lifted, they thought it was all over. The tribulations, the suffering. Compared to then, when liquid water was a fond memory and when the air itself would freeze in their mouths, this was but a fine summer's day.
Look at them now. Lost in some unknown land by some unknown scheme of some unknown God.
Gerald Amondsham wordlessly offered him his old fur overcoat, which Joseph took. He unfastened his glowworm before throwing it on, feeling the familiarly overbearing weight settle on his shoulders again.
"It's descending again, sir," Gerald muttered, "Shan't be long now. Best keep everything cosy."
Aye, that he could feel it - the winds were descending from the upper atmosphere once more. The Dragonfly Squadron had gone further than they had originally planned, aided by fortuneful winds guiding them through the mountain passes. While they had stocked up extra coal for the journey, they hadn't quite expected it to extend this far - or last this long. As such, they kept the boilers to maintain the pressure in the gasbags alone, and left the propulsion to the wind.
If it would stop, so would they. If it would sweep forth, it would sweep them with it.
The wind-gauge caught the corner of his eye, its arms slowly rotating in gradual speed.
A cry rang out across the deck; "We've got it, captain!"
"All hands to starboard!" Martin Heywood shouted, "Heave!"
A flurry of limbs jostled to the side of the ship, grappling onto the ropes and groaning as they pulled. The Dragonfly began to list as the wind-gauge whirred, and Joseph patted Gerald's shoulder.
"Canvas, mate," he said.
Gerald nodded rightly and began pulling out the sails, booms and yards slicing through the frigid air. Joseph climbed onto the quarter, placing a steady hand on the tiller. With a final heave, faces red and burgeoning with effort, a vast bear was pulled onto the weatherdeck, body sliding across the iced timber. Perhaps it was a polar bear, but Joseph wouldn't hazard a guess, for it was much larger than any he had seen in the Frostlands.
Fur white as freshly fallen snow, sprinkled with splotches of blood from harpoons - one in the head from a well-placed gunshot. It must be at least ten feet on its hinds, and there was scarcely space on the Dragonfly for its mammoth form.
"We'll be eating well, lads!" Henry cheered, and they cheered with him.
Aye, Joseph thought, that thing could feed all three ships for at least a week.
A bell rang out across the ship - the lovely sound of the wind-gauge picking up enough speed to ring the chimes. There was a length of quiet as the crew listened to the tinkling.
"All hands!" Joseph roared instantly, "Forget the bloody bear! All hands to your stations! Get those wings out!"
Spiralling ropes and a flash of four sails later, they were well underway. Gracefully skimming along the air currents, the Dragonfly traversed over the frozen wasteland, the bounding whitecaps of the Frostfangs to their east. Beneath them, the wind blew the snowdust into winding ribbons across the landscape, racing along with them like Grecian spirits in a cheerful footrace.
The deck was fullened with the thick smell of blood and fat and the white bear was carved apart and salted, before being barrelled away in the hold, the fantastic pelt hung up for later use in coats.
Before long, the Boreal Maiden and the Ivory Envoy appeared on the horizon, black dots steadily growing larger as the Dragonfly ploughed through the wintry sky. Flashes of gunfire sparked from their decks like starbursts, punching holes in the snowfall.
"Looks like they're havin' a real time o' it, capt'n," Gerald said, peering through the spyglass, "Must be in a real bit there."
Joseph snatched the spyglass away and put it to his eye. He could see Margaret Dean on the forecastle of her ship, her rifle booming through the mist. The crew of the Boreal Maiden were all lined on the sides of the ship, firing downwards. Two mates of the Ivory Envoy were shimmying up the shrouds to patch the envelopes above, holding onto the steel braces for their lives as arrows whizzed by their heads.
Below them, an icebound dreadnought. From a sight, it was clear the great vessel had been run aground and abandoned, before being reclaimed by the frost - half sunken into the frozen sea. Otherwise, it looked perfectly restorable. It was the only landmark for leagues upon this white hell, a dark splotch of steel grey amidst the bluish sea-ice.
They were unsure of the dreadnought's particulars, but they were all but certain it was of American make. From the reinforced icebreaker prow to the vast smokestack compensating for its powerful core-derived turbines. The disused centreline guns could even be found - God knows what an icebreaker dreadnought needed guns for. Only the Yanks would try to fit four twelve inch turrets on a refugee ship instead of leaving room for supplies or coal or quite literally anything else.
Perhaps they were expecting to use them to blast through the Atlantic ice.
Most alarmingly, however, was what drew them there in the first place - smoke columns. Upon their approach some days ago, it was discovered that some natives had found refuge in the great steel corpse and opted to stay, creating some small village in the belly of the beast - and they intended to stay.
He shoved the spyglass into Gerald's arms.
"Rifles!" he roared, "Rifles to bear! Anchor to larboard, strike the sails! Rifles to bear!"
As the first men scurried out of the hold with their guns in hand, he wrenched the tiller hard alarboard, sending the Dragonfly swerving violently and men knocked sprawling to the deck. With a howl, the anchor was released, plummeting to the earth as its chain raked through the hawse-hole.
The Dragonfly drifted in bow to starboard with the Boreal Maiden, guns over the deck and the first cracks of gunfire ringing out. Ammunition was limited, and with all the defensive placements and winding spaces on the deck of the dreadnought, it was terribly difficult to place a good shot. Thankfully, the natives didn't seem to be very clever - that, or they could not gauge how much ammunition the ships had left.
For any reason, they seem to think climbing up the anchor chains were the best way to take the airships - the stupid buggers. It was unfortunate, then, that they were getting picked off like insects as the shooters on each ship targeted the chains of the other, finding a perfect crossfire. They waited until the wildling climbers reached high enough that the fall would kill them, before sniping them off.
Only Margaret Dean and her girls - the best sharpshooters in all of New London - dared to fire upon the dreadnought head-on. And considering the corpses littering the deck of the dreadnought, they were finding their shots more often than not. Well, he supposed that was to be expected of army folk.
There was a flurry of commotion on the dreadnought as the wildlings scampered below-decks upon the arrival of the Dragonfly, like rats, leaving those still stranded halfway up the anchor chains to their terrible fate - as a red smear upon the hard-packed ice.
"...Fuckin' Hell," Martin cursed, "Are they expecting us to storm the thing?"
That, Joseph thought dryly, would be Hell on Earth. He could already imagine it - blood splattered across bleak, narrow corridors. Bodies piled high, filling in the bulkhead bottlenecks, and brutal ambushes from every nook and cranny of the dreadnought's sordid underbelly.
"Could we starve 'em out?" Henry peered over the side, "There can't be much food left in there."
"There can't be much people too, all things considered," Gerald said blandly, "We may have helped 'em a bit, there."
"Cock and balls."
Joseph tapped the railing in thought, before huffing.
"Signal the other two; recount all stores and rest for the night," he ordered, "Shoot over some ziplines, and distribute our catch. We'll descend on the morrow, should they not rear their ugly heads before then. Regular watches."
The next day was a doldrum one, dry and windless. They draped on their thick furs as the ships were slowly cranked downwards. With the Maiden on the larboard and the Envoy on the starboard, the Dragonfly grappled the dreadnought's conning tower and dragged itself close, until they were directing north of the rangefinder.
Joseph Edye was the first one off, "Move, move! Kill anyone up here, and seal all the entrances to below-decks! Martin!"
Martin Heywood was the only Yank among them, having served on the Prometheus before it made landfall off Wilhelm Island. Considering there was only one class of American icebreaker dreadnoughts, Martin was well familiar with the design.
"Yes sir!" Heywood vaulted over the railing, "You lot, with me!"
"Gerald, Henry! Bring out the burners!"
"Aye!"
Joseph glanced over the side, and saw the crew of the Maiden and the Envoy swarming onto the main deck, the ships tethered tightly to the cleats. Organised shouts sprang forth as the crews began to clear out the superstructure, roving in packs from chamber to chamber, smashing through ice-locked doors. They were all army and navy men, from whichever nation. Rowdy as they may be without a proper structure, they all fell back into old habits once it was needed.
"Clear!" a shout rang out from the bridge, "Captain, orders!"
He watched as pairs of men rushed past him carrying the burners. He followed them down, weaving through the unfamiliar compartments and the crewmates roaming through them like wraiths. They approached a thick all-metal door, and placed the burner before it with a clank.
"Use our worst quality coal," he ordered, "I want as much smoke and ash."
"It's still a bit of a waste," one man reckoned, "We aren't exactly swimming in it."
"Better than letting the natives have their way with things," Joseph retorted, "Have we figured out this bloody ship yet?"
A piercing whistle shot down the hallway, and Joseph snorted before following the sound, clambering down the stairs until he burst out onto the weatherdeck. The superfiring turrets rose to his left, icicles hanging from its long barrels. He found Margaret Dean standing there, rifle slung over her shoulder with a conspicuously wet bayonet.
"Dean?"
"The USS Hephaestus," she stated primly.
"Well, how about that?" he mused, "What's the Maiden and the Envoy looking at?"
Miss Dean sucked back a breath, "Maiden's doing a'ight. The Envoy, however… she's leaking pressure like a whore 'fore-hours. 'Fraid they're burning extra coal just to keep afloat while her mates struggle to patch her up."
"You think she might not make it?" he started climbing up the stairs to the top of the B turret.
Spinning around, he could see the glowworms scattered throughout the deck, and the sizzle of burners pumping smoke into the lower quarters.
"Temperature's rising, Edye," Dean marched up alongside him, "It's time to go home, I'd think."
"Then take the Envoy and double back," he said, "Return to Mister Rayder's camp and ask for more briquettes."
"Then what about the Dragonfly?"
Joseph paused, before snaking a hand into his coat and pulling out a compass and flipping off the cap. The needle span a while, before settling on a direction - north. He slowly turned around until he pointed northeast - towards the mighty white-crowned Frostfangs.
"That way's New London," he pointed. He couldn't see the Beacon or the smoke through the steepled mountains, but it was there, "And here's the Hephaestus."
Joseph pulled out his logbook and bit off his glove, flipping through the mess of folded pages and patch notes until he reached a map. Consulting his sketch, he slowly turned around until he pointed northeast.
He looked up.
The endless white plain stretched out before him, boundless, and hardly imaginable on any level. It was bereft of any human scale, so far and endless and interrupted one could see the curvature of the Earth. Icy zephyrs of snow swirled in the windswept desert, curling up over the ground. Lazy rivers swam in the distance, glittering iceflows that spanned a vastness that made the Rhine look like a brook.
"Then that way… should be Tesla City," Joseph finished.
"...You absolute spoony," Margaret Dean decided, "You think you'll make it? You're not Elizabeth bloody Hammer, you utter buffoon. Nor is the Dragonfly the Countess, it doesn't even have-"
"Captain!" Dean's quartermaster stumbled up the stairs, "They're surrendering!"
"What?" the captain spun on her heel, "These savages don't look like the type."
"The… women and children have tied up all their men and are giving them to us, ma'am," the quartermaster seemed just as puzzled, "They even claim to have their leader, some big bugger called the Great Walrus. We… we don't really know what to make of it."
Margaret shared a glance with him, before starting down the stairs, "Does this Walrus fellow have a crown?"
"Aye, something made of tusks."
"Shoot him and put it on one of the ladies' heads," she snorted as she disappeared down the staircase, "Seems like it's rather universal that women have greater sense than men."
Joseph huffed, before glancing at his compass once again. It was a long way north. He pocketed the device. The sailors were shepherding the wildlin survivors out of the hatches and bulkheads at gunpoint, through a thick smog of dirty haze that billowed out of the compartments, leading them onto the deck in ropes where they were forced to kneel.
They were odd, barbarian people - dressed in sealskins and furs, ornamented with tusks and bone and teeth. He could see massive dogs - wolves, perhaps - being dragged onto the deck, holes in their heads.
Already, he could hear sporadic shots as those who weren't cooperating were put down, while some deckhands ran about counting bodies.
"Hope they left some coal for us," he muttered.