Previous chapter: Part 1
Nightfall on the moon was always a spectacular affair, filled with equal parts wonder and dread. The grey grasses of the lunar seas darkened, the pale sands took on a ghostly boney glow, and the small forests of whiteleaf and silverpine and St Martin’s oaks that dotted the moonscape all slowly changed their coats from ivory to ebony. The entire land, nay, the entire ecosystem, seemed to change itself into a slumbering realm of frost and darkness, where all light and colour fled for the two weeks that lay ahead.
Of course, as stout mariners in Her Imperial Majesty’s Aeronautical Fleet, the men and officers of the Poseidon were not to be deterred by such fancies of the imagination as plagued this humble narrator, and they steered into the night with fire in their bellies and their eyes constantly watching for the Frenchmen whom had cast such destruction upon our colonies here. The survivors at Marshal Point had shown us a course that ran almost straight north, into the hinterlands to the east of the Sea of Cold, and Captain Devworth, over dinner on the first evening, shared his theory about where the privateers might be headed: Absolution Point. My spine chilled when I heard the name, and I spent the rest of the dinner with a terrible feeling of dread coiled around my heart.
The strangely named Absolution Point was a penal colony, filled with the roughest of the rough, where the prisoners were used to operate a crystal mine which they had sunk into the dry soils there. Veins of bile green and puss yellow crystal ran through the hills there, native lunar cousins to the meticulously crafted gems which powered the Poseidon itself - yet the crystals had a fearful reputation, and a nature which some scholars even whispered as verging on the demonic. Unlike the Glasgow crystals from Thomson and Blythe, these crystals - named daedricium, after the first accidents in 1854 - would inflict terrible skin lesions and boils upon those who harvested and used them. Death followed swiftly after the first appearance of said deformities. Only the most strenuous of care, involving lead aprons and gloves, could protect one from their devilish influences, and the skyships which used these crystals were infamous as ill-tempered beasts, prone to accidents and mishaps. The only reason the daedricium was used was because it was so cheap compared to the Glasgow crystals - one could literally pull them from the soil here, unlike the crystals from Terra which had to be grown and painstakingly nurtured over the course of many months.
This was the cost of progress, then: prisoners, working as slaves, digging and hauling and dying in their masses to harvest a crop of death.
Captain Devworth’s theory was that the privateers were likely heading to the penal colony to try and snatch up the collected crystals, which could then be sold for a pretty penny or three to those who wished to avoid the eye of the Crown, which was ever watchful about who purchased Glasgow crystals. If not Absolution Point, then what other reason could the privateers have to flee north? There was no food and no water in the region, and nothing else to sustain a man - unless they planned to live on the livestock which they had plundered from our colonies. By plundering Absolution Point, they would acquire a rich cargo, and then, depending on winds and the tides of the lunar seas, their journey could easily slip around to the dark side of the moon, where eager French ports awaited anyone flying their accursed tri-colour.
Thus ran the theory, and thus ran our course of actions as well. It was a five-day journey to Absolution Point, as estimated on the Admiralty charts, against prevailing winds that made our sails useless and thrust the sole responsibility of locomotion on our ponderous windmill engines. The first few days were achingly slow. Darkness gloomed our ship in funeral shrouds, and the land scudding past a dozen fathoms below seemed hardly to move. The cold settled in as the darkness deepened, and soon one could not venture above-deck without a thick fur coat, mittens, and a cap to keep the frigid polar winds at bay. Frost began to rime the railings and the lines, painting us as white as the sands we had left behind in the daytime. The order of the day was for light discipline to be maintained, with all lanterns hooded, and only the glowing Faraday coils along our keel shed some semblance of ghostly light upon the landscape beneath us. Part of the captain’s plan was to make us invisible in the dark, like some submerged marine monster hunting in the darkness of a river estuary, and thus we kept low to the ground for fear of our lightning-shrouded coils giving our position away to any watching French eyes.
The plan must have worked, for on the evening of the third day, the enemy was spotted.
The call came in from the crow’s nest, two sailors crouching there with telescopes peering off into the darkness, and amongst the crown of stars that watched from above, they spotted the telltale crackle and twitching of Faraday coils in the distance. The privateers were off to port, a league or two distant, and quite a bit higher than us. Master Brighton speculated that they must not have been expecting pursuit, else they would have lingered closer to the surface like us - but in this, their folly was our fortune. The Poseidon had spotted prey, and, with the smell of blood in the water, set off in pursuit. Captain Devworth ordered extra speed to the windmills, and the nacelles that hung aside the ship began to groan and creak with added vibrations as the vast blades that spun from them increased their agitations.
Of course, as the Devil would have it, Nature was not on our side - or perhaps the Devil was on the side of the French, a matter which we shall never know now. We had barely begun our pursuit when there was another cry, this time from starboard, and the weather lieutenant came dashing from the forecastle. A black storm, as stygian as the moonless sky above us, was rolling in from the east. It was a strange thing to behold, a creeping darkness that made itself known as an inkblot that drowned out the stars behind it, and I must confess that a terror gripped my heart then. The cold was not our ally in this hostile moonscape, and when the first of the black clouds slid between us and our distant prey, the temperature plummeted sharply. Winds lashed at the Poseidon, howling through empty spars and swaying masts, and the rattle of dislodged frost played a devilish staccato on the decks as the squalls began to rock us. Captain Devworth ordered all hands to, and orders flowed in a gushing torrent from the stern captain as he directed his officers and men to brace the Poseidon for the coming challenge.
Of course, as an observer and man of science, there was little place or purpose for me in this maelstrom that pitted Man against Nature, and the captain banished me to my quarters just as the first of the rain struck us. Sopping wet despite my furs and wool, I retreated belowdecks, where I spent the following three days alternating between prayer, worry, and sleep.
Little did I know that the worst was still to come.
Next chapter: Part 3
This definitely needs an animated version or, an audio play!
Entertaining, though a bit confusing for those of us who aren’t steampunk readers. The Aeronautical fleet were boats or did they fly? Did action take place on earth or the moon? I get that it’s the age old enemies France and England though otherwise a bit lost at sea.