Read The Aeronaut's Windlass for Free Online

stupid. He’d been tearing huge swaths of profit from the Auroran merchant fleet. It had been inevitable that they would eventually respond to him. Some idiot would probably say that the fact that they’d sent Itasca to deal with him was a high compliment. Said idiot wouldn’t be visiting the families of the dead men to give them his condolences and their death pay. He knew that he’d made sound decisions given what he’d known at the time, but some of his men were dead because of them nonetheless.
    They were dead because he’d commanded them, and they’d followed. They’d known the risks, to a man, and every one of them was ex-Fleet. Things could have gone immeasurably worse than they had—but that would be little comfort to the newly minted widows back at the home Spire.
    He sat and shuddered and regretted and promised dead men’s shades that he wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.
    He was the captain.
    *   *   *
    B y the time Creedy arrived with the damage report, Grimm had reassembled himself.
    “Captain,” Creedy said respectfully. “I don’t think your accomplishments have been properly appreciated at home.”
    “Oh?” Grimm asked.
    “Yes, sir,” Creedy said. Controlled admiration crept into his tone. “I mean, for the Aurorans to dispatch Itasca to mousetrap a lone privateer . . . when you think about it, it’s really a kind of compliment, sir.”
    Grimm sighed.
    “Captain Castillo is one of their best,” Creedy went on. “His attack was nearly perfect, but you slipped right through his fingers. If you were a captain in the Fleet you’d have merited tactical honors for . . .”
    Creedy’s face reddened and his voice trailed off.
    “There are worse things to happen to a man than being drummed out of the Fleet, XO,” Grimm said quietly. “Casualties, then damage reports. How bad?”
    “Bad enough,” Creedy said. “Five dead, six injured—shrapnel, mostly, and a concussion from an aeronaut in engineering who unhooked his second line too soon.”
    Grimm nodded. “The ship?”
    “The dorsal masts are stubs. We’ll need to get to a yard to replace them. We had to cut the rigging loose and drop it, so we lost most of the dorsal web. There’s a hole in the gun deck where the number three gun was—we’ll need a yard to repair that, too. And we blew two cables in our suspension rig.”
    Grimm took a slow breath. The suspension rig was the central structure of the ship, built around the main lift crystal. The weight of the entire ship hung suspended from the rig, and was distributed through its cables. There were eight of them, any two enough to bear the weight of the entire vessel . . . but the more cables broke, the more likely it was that those remaining would break—especially during any high-speed maneuvers. The loss of the occasional cable was expected, but was never to be taken lightly.
    “You’re saving the best for last, I think,” Grimm said.
    Creedy grimaced. “Chief Journeyman says there are fractures in the main lift crystal.”
    Grimm stopped himself from spitting an acid curse and closed his eyes. “That second dive, so soon after the first.”
    “That was his theory, sir. He’s cut power to the lift crystal, and is running extra to the trim crystals to make up the difference in buoyancy and keep us afloat.”
    Grimm smiled faintly and opened his eyes. There would be no prize money on this trip, and no bounty, either. The trim crystals that helped adjust the ship’s attitude were expensive, and using them to help maintain the ship’s lift would be hard on them, but replacing them was a standard operating cost. The large crystals sufficiently powerful to suspend airships were another matter—they were far rarer and much more bitterly expensive. Only a power core cost more, assuming one could be found at all.
    Where would he get the money?
    “I see,” Grimm said. “We’ll simply have to replace it, I suppose. Perhaps Fleet will put in a word with