Chapter 88: Royal Engineers Part 5

***
The explosion shook Cal's office and she was out the door and heading to the main level before her mug hit the floor. Landers and Digney were organizing the response to the disaster. Men bleeding and groaning on the floor were being checked by their uninjured team members. A couple of the engineers were tying bandages and giving orders. They worked calmly and efficiently as if the Shed weren't filled with acrid smoke and their ears still ringing from the blast. Cal's heart swelled with pride. She stayed out of their way, checking outside instead.
"Hanson's run for the academy, they have a hospital there to train medics." The guard pointed. "They're comin' now, Commander."
The medics jumped off the coach and ran in the door with their bags and took over. Cal followed at a slower pace. Injured were carried away on stretchers, four men were covered with blankets. Soon only the uninjured were left.
"What happened?" Cal looked at the pieces of the machine shop scattered across the floor.
"Looks like the forge." Landers rubbed his eyes. "The boys were firing it up to get working on Patrick's fan-engine. Few minutes after they loaded the coal and started the bellow, it blew. We were going to forge each blade, grind it to size, then weld them to the central shaft. So I had them set up to be able to pass each piece along to the next stage. Figured it would still take a week to get it assembled. That's why there were so many casualties."
"Don't know anything that could blow a forge up like that, not accidentally anyway." Digney picked up something from the floor. "This doesn't look like a piece of the forge. More like one of the boilers - if we made it real thin."
"Could a boiler blowing cause this much damage?" Cal waved at the equipment knocked over and strewn about. Now that she looked for it, she could see the chaos fanned out from the forge.
"Might, but they'd have noticed a boiler stuck in there." Digney handed her the fragment. "And this is too thin. Wouldn't hold much pressure."
"What if the ball was packed with gunpowder?" Cal peered at the thing in her hand. The inside looked black. She rubbed it with her thumb and it came away smudged. "Bury it under the coal. Then when the forge is heated, the ball fails, the powder explodes and ..." she waved at the mess.
"We'll post guards inside and out of the building." O'Brien came over from where he'd been studying what was left of the forge. "Nobody gets in or out without being checked. Won't stop them if they're determined, but it will slow them down."
"Do that, then focus on the backgrounds of the men working here. Do it over until you find something. Start with anyone who wasn't in the room when the forge blew." Cal waved Tallinan over from where he stood at the bottom of the stairs. "I will need the names of the dead, and their families. I will personally inform them of the incident."
"Commander..." Tallinan started to object, then dropped his eyes. "Aye, Commander."
"I am their commanding officer. It is my responsibility."
***
Cal stood in the barn outside her home. The stonework had been scrubbed, the floor relaid with fresh planks.
"Let's give it a try." Cal waved at Hans who pulled a long lever. Slowly, then with increasing speed, the roof gaped open. The two halves settled with a thump. "Now closed." Hans moved another lever. A pump began chugging below them. The roof lifted slowly, creaking as the pistons moved at slightly different speeds. The peak closed. Hans let the pump run a moment longer before returning the first lever to its original position to lock the system. Then he turned off the pump.
"I'd say that counts as a success." Cal walked around the barn. "I have a project in mind. I'll need a bolt or two of silk. See if you can pick up fabric that's spoiled or something. As long as it isn't rotten. Wood too, thin enough to be a bit flexible, but not weak. And some rope too.
"I will get it all assembled." Hans looked thoughtful. "You building a kite?"
"Something like that." Cal grinned. "Let's keep the work we do here quiet. With security issues at Shed, we don't need to attract the wrong kind of attention here."
As the work at the Shed restarted, the men looked at each other suspiciously. They were all smart enough to know the explosion was no accident. New people were vetted carefully. As a further precaution, Cal created more separation between the teams, setting up a second workshop for the engine team specific to their needs.
The envelope team had moved from measuring to testing prototypes of possible shapes.
"We have to decide how to create the envelope." Ensign Cesare sat at Cal's table in her office and pointed to drawings he'd laid out. "One possibility is to have a single bag hold the hydrogen. It would be lightest, but perhaps the least stable and most vulnerable to damage. The other possibility would be to make a frame, then stretch the envelope around it. It would make it easy to attach the gondola to the envelope. Dividing the envelope into sections would help because if the envelope were damaged, we wouldn't lose all our lift at once. The Ferandican's airship looks to be a blend of the two. They don't have a complete frame, but the envelope is reinforced at top and bottom. It saves weight and yet gives a bit more stability. We will need to have flaps, like so." He drew quickly on the paper. "To keep the airship from rolling. Think of them as keels, but on four sides. As with a ship, we'll need rudders - one for side to side and one for up and down."
"Let's make a small version of each. We can fly them inside the hall, and test the strengths of each design."
"Aye Commander."