And yet, it had been completely unnecessary. She didn't have to fire. They could have waited out the apes, or at least rested before the attack. Mordecai understood Natasha's hurry; should the Queen free its tangled rigging from the outcrop, they'd lose their only method of transport. But it had lasted throughout the day; it was likely to hold here a little longer.
He ordered the dead stripped, the dying put down, and then moved the crew onto the airship. Thankfully, they were too tired or injured to feel resentment; Mordecai himself didn't have much left in him to deal with such trifles.
The Copper Queen looked just as bad on the inside as it did on the out. The apes hadn't helped. Detritus, tools, and rigging were strung everywhere. Above them the gasbag frame bulged at the stern, and the whole deck slanted dangerously toward the bow.
Natasha was already waiting for them. She stood amidships, clinging to a support line anchoring the deck to the frame. "About time," she said, voice flat but pitched to carry. "Reaver Jane, you alive? Good. Take the Wiley Brothers and Farrel up above. Get the light-air cells in the frame rebalanced. Have a care, I think there's still an ape or two up there. Skinny Tom, get yerself and five others to cleaning up this mess. Toss anything we don't need and won't burn; it's just ballast. Something happened to the cannons. They look melted, I don't know. Get rid of all but one. Keep the powder. Mordecai, get us cut free from this damned rock, and see if you can get that furnace going; we're going to need the propellers."
Their captain turned back and began the climb to the aftcastle deck. Mordecai stared at her, then looked at the others. They stared after Natasha wearily.
He had to retain order. "You heard her," he snapped. "Get moving."
Mordecai waited until the crew were busy, then rushed up the deck after his captain. He found her glaring up at the propeller system. The old propellers had long rusted away to disuse; these had been hurriedly fitted back in Haventown, and only kept going thanks to the bungling Mechanist youth they'd acquired.
"Looks like it should work still," said Natasha. "Have Tom keep anything that'll burn. Attend to it now, though, we haven't a lot of time."
"What," asked Mordecai, "is the hurry? We're aboard now, the apes are gone. The crew are going to mutiny if we keep up at this rate."
Natasha gave him a cold look. "That is what I keep you around for. Besides, you exaggerate. They're all so dead tired they can barely get moving. Which isn't enough, damn it. We need to hurry."
"Again, why?"
"We're going to need to swing back to the Albatross wreckage. There's that last bit of treasure, and those canisters of light-air gas we replaced from the Dawnhawk. We need the latter, and I am not leaving the former behind. There's also some wreckage we can burn for fuel."
Mordecai relaxed a little. That was sound. "Of course not. But we can afford to wait a Goddess-damned bit. We just lost eight crew, ten if you count last night. We've got the ship. This thing is a wreck as it is. Let's take it easy back to Haventown. We cut our losses carefully—"
Natasha broke into wild, angry laughter. Her face was manic when she finished. "Cut our losses?" she said with a smile. "Head back to Haventown? You're confused, Mordecai. We aren't going home. We're going after the Dawnhawk."
Mordecai started. He shook his head. "We've lost it already. He's leagues and leagues away by now."
"I don't care," said Natasha, quietly, dangerously. "He's stolen my ship twice now. He's stolen my treasure, made me a laughingstock." She took a step towards Mordecai. "I will hunt Fengel to the ends of the earth, and teach him a lesson he won't soon forget."
She held his gaze. It was terrible. Mordecai turned away first. When he looked back up he saw that she had turned her own attention away, back to the deck to shout orders down to the crew. Mordecai stared at the back of her head, rage and frustration almost overwhelming him.
He suddenly had an epiphany. It washed over him in a moment of crystal clarity. She's going crazy. This whole mess is driving her mad. He would have to do something about that, he realized. Soon.
And Mordecai was nothing if not a conscientious first mate.
Chapter Sixteen
Lina waved a chunk of hardtack. Runt lurched up in an attempt to snag it from her.
"Beg," she said to it. "Go on. Beg for it."
Early evening sunlight filled the deck. She sat with the scryn in her favorite place, up against the port-side exhaust-pipe. Almost a full day had passed since the retaking of the Dawnhawk. Lina preferred not to think about that; they weren't nearly as far away from the wreck of the Albatross as she would have liked.