“There are problems with ascending,” Bockholt explained. “If we go too high, the air pressure differential causes us to lose hydrogen. Lose enough and we lose lift. And, too, the lower temperature up there causes the hydrogen to lose volume hence to lose lift, too. Unless we’re bombing England, when we have to go as high as possible to stay out of the reach of the defenses, the smart course for an airship is rather low, a couple of hundred meters. That’s another reason for us to traverse Yekaterinoslav at night. Of course, too, we’re going to have to go a bit higher to get over the Urals.”
“How will we know where we are?” Kostyshakov asked.
“A mixture of dead reckoning—landmarks, compass, and speed—but we also use celestial navigation, chronometer and sextant, just as if we were on a ship at sea. Don’t fear, we’ll put you down where your forward team said they’d be waiting.”
Daniil took a last look out a side window. The ground was fast slipping behind. About two hundred and fifty arshini up, I should think.
“I think I should be getting back to my men, Captain.”
“Of course, sir. Sleep well. You’re as safe as in your mother’s own arms.”
My mother’s arms were never this fucking cold, thought Kostyshakov, shivering miserably, like everyone else, in the unheated compartment. Some of the men apparently had no trouble falling asleep, indeed, seemed to go to sleep as a way to avoid the misery.
Note to self: If I survive, and am ever in a position to do something about it, a way to heat airships, the designing of. Other note to self: After the troubles are over, back to school for engineering.
Nice to hear no one is panicking. Rather, it’s nice to not hear it. This whole flying thing? I’m not sure it’s got a future for anything but lunatics who actually like being someplace they can fall to their deaths from. For me, I swear, I will never take this mode of transportation again if I can avoid it. What was it that old Englishman said, something about being on a ship is being in prison, but with the added chance of being drowned? Well, at least on a ship you can walk around freely. Being on an airship is being in an insane asylum, with a straightjacket on, and the chance of being burnt alive.
Daniil took out his signed picture of Tatiana Nicholaevna Romanova. He never let any of the officers or men of the battalion see that he had it, lest they think this was all a personal crusade. But he’d look at it, sometimes, in the dead of night, by the light of a candle.
The fact is, I don’t even know if you still want me. There were only those couple of letters before I was captured, and those I had to destroy lest the Germans use them against you and Russia. Only this picture did both I and the Huns miss. Well… I can hope your heart has not grown cold toward me. And, if it has… well… this is still my sworn duty to you and your family.
Yekaterinoslav, Russia
It was about an hour before sunset, the weather clear and fine. Two German fighter pilots stood by their machines on an unimproved grass strip. The planes were both fueled, with a ground crewman standing by each to twist the engines to life.
Sergeant Karl Thom was an experienced pilot, first flying a reconnaissance plane and then, with twelve victories, to date, as a fighter pilot. He deeply resented being pulled from his slot in Jagdstaffel 21 for this nothing mission at the ass end of nowhere.
Adding insult to injury, he hadn’t been sent off with a new Fokker D. VII, oh, no. Instead, when tasked, his commander had decided that an old Albatros D. V would be plenty good enough.
To be fair, thought Thom, at least he let me take my pick of the D. Vs. And, given there’s nobody here to fight, a D. VII would have been a waste. I’m just angry at being pulled from the action. Well, that and that the D. V is a simply rotten aircraft, from its tendency to fall to pieces in a dive to its miserably placed instrumentation suite.
Thom’s mate, from a different squadron entirely, was also a Carl, with a C, Sergeant Carl Graeper. Graeper didn’t seem nearly as annoyed as Thom felt.
Maybe it’s because his squadron, Jasta 50, wasn’t getting D. VIIs when he was pulled out.
Thom consulted his watch. “About that time,” he announced to Graeper.
Both men climbed up their aircraft and into the cockpits. Two of the ground crewmen stood in front of the planes, their hands grasping the propellers. Another pair stood on tires, helping the pilots to settle in.
At a signal from their pilots, the former jerked the propellers counterclockwise, causing the motors to shudder into life. They sprang back, instantly, to avoid losing hands to the spinning blades. Then each pair bent down to drag away the chock blocks that held the planes in place.
Thom fed a little more gas to the engine and was rewarded with a steady drone and a propeller that disappeared into the thin blur in front of him. He began to taxi to the runway, then swung unto a wide right turn. The grass stretched out before him. Using his left thumb, Thom applied throttle, increasing his speed rapidly. In no time he was airborne and making a slow spiral upward.
Glancing over his left shoulder—God bless whoever decided to get rid of that miserable, sight-blocking headrest—to see Graeper rising behind him on the same basic upward spiraling pattern.
The spiral gave way to a long, slow set of turns, scanning three hundred and sixty degrees around for any threat to the airship he was tasked with protecting. There was nothing there, though.
For all the need for me here, I could have done as much by flying in France.
Making another left-hand turn, it was the shadow of the airship that Thom first saw, a huge, darkened, and regular shape on the ground. Until he realized it was too regular, the pilot initially thought it was a cloud casting that shadow. Adjusting he gaze, then, he saw it, the L59, lower than he really expected, gracefully and effortlessly moving toward Yekaterinoslav from the west.
Again Thom consulted his watch. A bit early but the sun will still be down before they cross by the town.
He began to descend to a lower level, largely with the fixed intention of getting on the ground before it became necessary for the ground crew to light beacon fires.
L59
High in his hammock, Vasenkov thought, I do not think I have ever been this cold in my life. Forget the calming effect; if it weren’t for the vodka making the blood flow faster, I think my hands and feet would be nothing but blocks of ice. And it’s worse for me than most because I am so thin.
But vodka won’t keep me from freezing solid on its own.
From his bread bag he took a sausage, squared off, hard, and dry, as well as a chunk of bread. “Landjaeger,” Taenzler called these. We don’t have sausage like this back home. Oh, well, how bad can it… At his first bite, Vasenkov realized he had fallen in love. These are perfect, wonderful. The perfect blend of lean and fat, perfectly cured, dry on the outside but, oh, so juicy on the inside. “Two with some cheese and a half a pound of bread makes a meal,” he said. I can see where they would.
Now if only those religion-addled fools in the other hammocks would stop praying so loudly…