Previous chapters: Part 2 Part 1
Three days of storm equated to three days of poor sleep, spilled meals, and the insidious fingers of the moon’s nighttime cold reaching into our very bones. The Poseidon fought the storm valiantly for the first day, and I could oft-times feel the thrum and crackle of the Faraday coils underfoot as they fought to keep us aloft on pillars of gravitic aether - but when the morning bell tolled on the second day, Captain Devworth ordered the ship to land. The storm winds were playing havoc on our masts despite their naked state, and the sail-clad windmill blades were starting to develop tears and cracks which would surely have doomed us had we pressed on. A copse of moonpine was spotted on the twisting and rain-soaked landscape below us, and in the darkness we descended in lurches and stutters until we were finally riding at grass-top level some distance from the swaying trees. Here, closer to the ground, the weather was marginally less agitated, and teams of mariners in furs and galoshes were soon straining on long hawser lines to tow us the rest of the way to safety next to the trees. The windmill engines were halted, locked in place to preserve their blades, and raw man-power took over where machinery had fought before. Lashed to the stout pines, and with several anchors deployed around both the bow and the stern of the ship, Captain Devworth finally ordered the Faraday coils to cease their efforts, and the Poseidon settled to the ground.
Being beached did not mean that we were immune to the remaining ravages of the storm though, for once the Faraday coils powered down, the lunar cold crept back into the ship. The vast brass coils, verging on the arcane in their complexity, were capable of generating a fearsome heat from their operation, which would normally be dissipated by the cold lunar airs that now lay far above us. Now, however, they would no longer serve to heat the interior of the ship in the same manner. While the men bustled about and stayed busy with the mundane tasks of shipboard life and the emergency repairs from the pressing storm, cold began to permeate the ship from the ground up, and by the second evening I was shivering in my cabin while working on my journal. No amount of foot-stamping or leg-stretching helped to alleviate this pernicious atmosphere, and I must confess that I did, at that point in time, begin to look back fondly to my previous tour along the Mediterranean and the positively Olympic weather we had experienced while touring the French holdings in Egypt. Of course, this memory was from a time before the hostilities between our Queen and the loathsome Lich King of France, and I suppose my recollections of Egypt would have been greatly different had the Corpse Emperor Napoleon been more war-like at that time.
The third day of the storm saw more wind and less rain, along with a settling cold that left grey frost over the small porthole of my cabin. I must confess that I did little except sleep, eat, and shiver under my blankets, on this day.
The next morning tolled in a calm, dry and cold day, and the officers and men set to repairing the last of the storm damage with vigour. Captain Devworth was a force of nature to counter that which had striven to wreck the Poseidon, and the man bent his will - and that of his men - to the repairs of his ship much like the storm had bent the trees around us. The main masts and their spars had taken some strain from the ferocious winds, but it was on the windmill nacelles that most of the work was concentrated, for it was on their mechanical endurance which we would now have to rely to continue our pursuit.
I took the opportunity to go on deck and take a brisk walk around the outside perimeter of the ship, stomping through frosted grass and clumps of ice-sheathed lunar shrubbery with a lantern in hand and my science bag at the ready. The walk did me good, in terms of both circulation and locomotion, and I even managed to take and label several cuttings of moonpine from the nearby copse before the boarding call sounded. At this point there was a semi-dignified scramble to get back aboard the Poseidon, for no man wanted to be beside the airship when those Faraday coils finally crackled into life again. Even the smallest of metal buckles or buttons, be they on your coat or shoes, could attract a questing finger of white-hot energy from the coils - and when Lady Faraday blessed you with her touch, the resultant explosion would drive a man straight up into the air and leave only smoking shoes behind.
Once we were airborne again, we set a course to continue our journey to Absolution Point, and the black lands below us soon faded into a nighted blur. The stars had returned, gleaming and bright, and between their celestial positions and that of our beloved homeworld floating low on the horizon, Captain Devworth and his navigator were able to ascertain our position again after the tumult of the storm. At the same time, sharp eyes scanned the darkness around us for any signs of the French ships, who - if luck would have it - had probably weathered the storm on the ground in much the same way as us. Based on what we had heard from Sloveton and Marshal Point, the privateers were smaller ships compared to the Poseidon, which suggested that they would have been even more susceptible to the bullish winds that had so battered us.
Of course, we were still two full days away from our destination, and if the French recovered faster than us, or managed a better speed than us - the Poseidon was more whale than dolphin, truthfully, and not built for sprints - there was no telling what we would find when we eventually reached the slave mines at Absolution Point.
In the days since, I often wondered how this story would have played out if Fate had tipped our hand - or our rudder - ever so slightly in a different direction to the course we took that day, but as with all musings of this kind, one cannot ever fathom a true answer.
Suffice to say that when we finally spotted the lights of Absolution Point on the horizon, they were not the focused beams of their lighthouse, but instead the leaping flames of a settlement on fire - and in that light, we could see our foes circling.
Next chapter: Part 4
Still a great read, with a huge cliffhanger this time! I love the way you are combining the familiar aspects of this era with the exotic moon and fantasy stuff. My eyes shot open at "Lich King of France." This seems like such a cool world to explore even before we get to the space stuff.
Ah, I do love this science magic alternate universe you've built :) Lich king of France? Corpse Emperor Napoleon? Then what is Elizabeth, a Queen of wraiths? Can't wait to read the next chapter!