Ginger Kate and the Ears of a Bat

"Ginger Kate, the Irish Jew, peerless queen of derring do."

"With handsome ships and randy crew, she deftly ruled the wide and blue."

The lumbering lyrics of the old airman's drinking song spilled out the door of the tavern...."Queen of the Skies", according to the gaily painted wooden sign over the door, that portrayed an old style corvette, cannons smoking. Looking higher, I smiled to myself... I was proud of that wind vane riding the peak of the roof, it had taken me most of one summer to complete, when I still lived at home. Of hammer formed copper, the same airship as the sign, but the airscrews, spinning in the wind, drove tiny dynamos that charged a bank of capacitors hidden in the hull, as well as driving a clockwork system of intermittent switches that discharged each capacitor in turn through glow coils in the cannon's mouths. When the wind blew ( which was most of the time, on a broad slope overlooking the village below, and beyond that, the sea ) and everything worked as intended, the ship seemed to be firing into the night. If the lamp oil reservoir was kept full, the cannons even flamed and smoked. They were smoking today.

That sign had caught the attention of several merchants in town, and led my to crafting more and eventually, a place in the artificers guild. The snaky bodied dragon, wind vane,done for another tavern in town, whose broad bat-like wings flapped as it rose and fell on its central pole, was especially fun, even though the town fire marshals had nixed my plans for it to gout fire.

"Our ship undone, we'd aught to do but stand the line and face review" "She looked us o'er, we bloodied few, and said to me... "I'm taking you!"

To your typical customer, the tavern didn't look the fort that it was. The head high courtyard walls, banked with earth on their outer faces, were effective revetments, the stone benches along the inner walls could function as firing platforms, the narrow, winding entrance trench was offset from the main door, the thick oak trestle tables and benches, turned on their sides, would form effective cover and barricades, the entire courtyard a killing field under the slit windows, high in the thick stone tavern walls...but those details were blurred and softened by pots of flowers, fruit trees trained against the northern walls, a central fountain, and the scattering of lighter tables and chairs scattered about the flagstone paving. Facing south and well sheltered from the wind, the courtyard was pleasant in all but the worst weather.

The scars from the one assault I'd heard of were weathered into near invisibility, decades later.

Stepping into the warmth and food smells spilling out the door, I entered, finding, as expected, an older woman with long, pale red hair, tucked back in a corner.

"Hullo, mum."

"Kate! Sit. Catch me up on your latest project."

Mum was Kate also (and the tavern owner, and the subject of the drinking song still galumphing along on the other side of the bar) Da is in there too. They'd settled down and bought the tavern when the Queen had offered amnesty to Mum's pirate fleet, in return for helping train the Queens privateers. The whole arrangement evidently had only made official a relationship that had been clandestine for some years prior, as best as I've been able to discover. None of them will say much about it.

"As we kissed, my yardarm grew, she trimmed my wick and Moby blew." "Then when we met the morning dew, she's tying down me kangaroo."

"They never tire of that song. If I didn't threaten to cut them off, the verses would be raunchier still. I sometimes think your father encourages them when I'm not nearby."

"That sounds like something he'd do, he still thinks you're hot stuff."

Mum went a little pink..."Even so, there's a limit."

When my guild sponsor had been able to convince the Artificers Guild examiners that the wind vane was a suitable journeyman's sample work, and that I should be allowed to bypass the traditional apprenticeship, based on their judgment as to it's quality, some objected to its somewhat weather-beaten appearance ( it had been in use for three years at that point) My sponsor pointed out that few journeyman works had been exposed to so thorough a test regimen before examination. When I added that I'd seen the need to face some of the switch contacts with graphite, due to wear, and fit wick oil cups to the main bearings, I think it was that attention to detail that swayed the last of them.

"Kit's Artisans, Automatons and Engineering", my job shop in town, keeps me busy. My team of designers and fabricators ship mechanical signage, bespoke scientific equipment, and unique toys all over Scotland, the empire, and the world. Occasionally we get a commission for something larger and more challenging; it was one of these that had me visiting the Queen.

"Kit's received a "request for submission" from Air Command Procurement last week, we've been looking into it, and I was hoping you could help with one of the details."

Kits had been asked to submit a sample "audio enhancement assembly" (the name was an obvious attempt to obscure what the thing would do) to Air Command, to be tested against several others from various engineering and job shops, with the winner being awarded a contract for a hundred further copies. If successful in broad usage, larger orders to follow, the winner retaining rights to license the design, under a fee structure, to other shops for volume production. The idea being that if hundreds of these devices, that would work rather like an optical range finder, but using sound, were installed along the borders and coastlines, listeners could give early warning of an invading air fleet, and pinpoint the location. Air marines could then be launched to intercept, balloon suspended aerial minefields fired into position, to threaten and slow the attackers...I sketched out a rough picture for mum.

She grinned...."Smugglers would probably keep the crews manning them hopping. Good experience, I suppose. So how could I help? That sort of thing is what your father gets excited about, I'm just a strategist."

"I remember a story you told me as a child, about hiding in a cloud bank to ambush a merchant convoy. You didn't go into how you'd known when to spring the trap, but my impression was that you heard them. That seems unlikely, now, unless you had something like what I want to build."

"Your father did come up with what looked like a very large speaking trumpet or Edison horn, made of doped silk over a frame of split and shaved cane, for lightness. Through it, you could hear airscrews several minutes before you could hear them otherwise. Direction was tougher, though you could get a rough idea. Within ten degrees of heading, often enough. Merchantmen sounded different than warships, which was useful."

"Well, that wont do, we work with metal, and the collectors need to be rugged and usable in all weather. And BIG, ten feet or more across, unless my calculations are very far wrong."

"What about something made of hammered copper? Or spun, like the bell of a horn?"

"We can't spin anything big enough without putting a lot of money into a much bigger spinning lathe than any we have, ordering or building one will take too long, and I'd like to keep it in house. We have lots of practice with hammer forming, and we're well tooled for that, so that would be easier... for the prototype, at least. The other problem is filtering or tuning the frequencies the operator hears, wind noise could be problem, many will be coastal installations"

"Dogs and bats hear better than we can...maybe it's the shape of their ears?"

"Bat ears would have to filter wind noise, too, they're flying while they listen for the echoes of their squeaks. I'll look into that. "

"I'll see if I can find your great uncle's journals for the years he was studying bats, I remember seeing some drawings of bat ears in there, as a child."

"That would be a huge help, I'll have one of our library research people in Edinburgh see what they can dig up, as well. Thanks Mum!"

"Lets go dig through the attic, I think I know what chest your uncle's journals are in. It's slow in the taproom, the staff doesn't need me tonight."