The Aeronaut: A Steampunk Tale of World War I

By Bryan Young

An American soldier in WWI France flies a jetpack over no man’s land in this steampunk historical adventure of action, espionage, and romance.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Europe is in the grip of bitter and bloody war. Computational machinery has allowed great technological leaps on both sides—making trench warfare even deadlier for soldiers at the front.

Some men fight to defend their homeland. But Robert Preston flees America and joins the French Army to escape heartbreak. Placed in the elite 5th Aeronautic Corps, he learns to use high-tech jetpacks to leap over trenches—and the deadly no man’s land between them. It’s a dangerous job with a low survival rate, but Preston is determined to make a difference.

There, he meets a man he calls his best friend, and a woman he believes is the love of his life. But a top-secret mission behind enemy lines, and a heart full of jealousy, threatens to tear the three of them apart forever.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Nov 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781680573954

Book preview

1

My name is Robert Preston and my first real day on a trenched battlefield of the Great War seems as good a place as any to say things started. All the travel and training to get to that spot seems so inconsequential now, and so do the few days I spent there in the trenches before the actual battle. Suffice it to say that I got there, to that deep cut of Earth in the French countryside, and it was the first time I met a man named Andre LeBeau. Our fates would be linked inextricably, though I didn’t know that at the time.

To be sure, he’s the one who helped set me down my path.

The only person who might be more important to the story is Sara, but I wouldn’t meet her until much later, in the wounded fall of 1915.

I was naive then to think the war would fix my problems, but as I spent my time nursing a shattered heart, fighting the Central Powers seemed as good a way to mend as any. When I left the States, I knew my heart could never soar again, but I wanted to know the rest of me could. I wanted to fly and the French Army promised me they could make it happen, even if they didn’t quite tell me how.

Risking the U-boats, bomber zeppelins, and skyships that blockaded passage across the Atlantic, I booked my ticket, leaving America behind to take France as my adopted country.

Andre LeBeau and I were jumpers in the 5th Aeronautic Division and our chances of surviving even a single battle were low. After one combat jump, we lived on borrowed time and we knew it.

Our job was to provide a psychological and logistical advantage to the Triple Entente in every battle we fought. French scientists, working around the clock for years, cloistered away in rooms full of computational machinery, had cracked a scientific code the Germans hadn’t: they had designed and manufactured individual jump packs.

It was with one of those scientific miracles strapped to my back that I started my first day as a man and a soldier in the war. With that pack resting tightly and heavily over my shoulders and tied across my middle, I found myself standing next to Andre LeBeau and a hundred other soldiers to each side besides. LeBeau was a handsome fellow with an oily wave of brown hair and a jaw too square for a Frenchman. The uniform made him look bulky, but his frame was wiry, thin in the middle.

With all the metal plating sewn into the canvas-and-asbestos coverall, we jumpers all looked much bigger than we were. Add all that padding to the pack itself and we looked absolutely monstrous.

The packs were massive, unwieldy, and more than a little awkward. They were twice the width of a man and of a polished alloy casing, watertight to hold all the gasses and gears it needed to create the jet stream for its propulsion. They were rocket-powered and made me feel like I was living in the future, like a hero in a novel by Jules Verne. Fueled by hydrogen peroxide and nitrogen gas, the combustion gave a jumper exactly sixty-three seconds of flight time; just enough time to jump from one side of a battlefield to another and then back again.

Every piece of the uniform, from the armoured metal vest to the loose-fitting pants that concealed pockets of leaden asbestos armour, were the same horizon blue every poilu wore. I’m told the pants used to be red, but the Germans, in all their chemical superiority, controlled the dye, and so the uniform became blue all over.

The smell of the packs, of the peroxide and oils, overpowered the smell of the peat and loam of the trenches, but we knew that wouldn’t last long. Soon, all of those smells would give way to gunpowder and ozone and death.

To arm us, the French Army had seen fit to give us pistols and flamethrowers. In theory, we would land quickly, roast the Germans in their trench until the fuel had run out, then we’d turn our backs to the enemy, and jump back to our own trench.

In practice, we would probably die before we made it across.

By that time, the rest of the poilus would have made it across hell as well, and then the grand army of France would be victorious.

That’s how they explained it would happen, but no plan ever survived contact with the enemy. Standing there in the mud, in a line with a hundred other jumpers and heartache burning a hole in my middle, victory did not feel possible or even necessary.

The letter I carried in my breast pocket seemed so important then, so important that I didn’t care if I jumped from the ground and only came down with the impact of a bullet. It’s said that time heals all wounds, but I didn’t want to be healed.

Not then.

Maybe not even now.

I’ve since known hurt more deeply than any I’d experienced then, but I had been convinced that I was the most wounded among those in line that day.

What a fool I was. Am.

It would not kill you to smile a bit, the man next to me whispered.

Keep it to yourself, I told him back.

These were the first words I exchanged with Andre LeBeau.

He smiled at me, as if to lead by example. If you insist, monsieur. But I think it would do us all a favor if we smiled for the Germans. They’re so serious that even a crack of a smile will send them into fits, giving us the advantage.

I tried my hardest not to smile back, turning the corners of my mouth down. It didn’t work very well, though. How could I not have been won over by his easy charm?

He offered his hand to shake. They call me LeBeau.

Preston. I clasped his hand in mine and shook.

Is this your first jump, Monsieur Preston?

I hesitated to answer, but nodded once, solemnly. Oui. And you?

LeBeau nodded his head in the affirmative as he pulled his goggles over his eyes. In combat, yes.

I clutched the flame rifle they’d given me, hoping to draw strength from it. It felt solid in my hands and was of the most simple design in the world. Atop the rifle was a bulbous cylinder of flammables that sprayed through a pilot flame at the end, just before the bayonet. We jumpers had less than a minute’s worth of fuel in our rifles, but that’s when we had the choice of sticking Germans with our white-hot bayonets or drawing our pistols and shooting what few bullets we had.

The flame rifle, as they related to me in my too-brief training, was the key to the French psychological advantage. The Germans had superiority in many ways, but the French had the Aeronauts who would rain fire on the enemy.

It seemed to me that we were a limited resource. We could only fly for a little bit, our fire ran out quickly, and there we were, nakedly mortal and left standing at the lip of German trenches just waiting for them to kill us.

Maybe that would have been an easier ending to my story.

But there we stood, ankle-deep in the muck, waiting for the whistle to blow and the captain’s hand to drop, letting us know it was our turn to go.

I’ll never forget the scene in front of us, across the span of the trench. Lined four or five men thick was the group of blue-clad poilus that would be climbing up over the edge of our trench, raising their rifles and charging.

They were cold and tired and filthy, just like the Aeronauts. And frightened, just like us. I don’t think either group could figure out who had it worse. They weren’t going to have explosives propelling them over the battlefield, but they were going to have to cover all that distance on foot. They didn’t have to carry rifles full of flammable fluid that would ignite with a single stray bullet, but they were a lot easier to hit.

I remember shrugging, and LeBeau put his hand on my shoulder as though he could read my mind. Don’t worry. We all have it equally bad. We’ll get through this, though, you and I.

What makes you so sure?

You’re lucky. I can tell.

If you insist.

Much as I tried to ignore him, I could almost make out my reflection in LeBeau. My frame matched his, though my shoulders were broader. My hair was brown like his, though it was kept too short to wave. One could almost mistake us for brothers at first glance.

But in a war, we all looked the same anyway.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about trench warfare, it’s that you’re never ready to go over the wire. Ever. When you’re waiting for the whistle, there’s never enough time to brace yourself. One second you’re standing there in the mud, terrified, adjusting your goggles and scarf, and the next second you hear the whistle and you’re already halfway over the battlefield. That first time was no exception. I don’t remember engaging the thruster on my pack, but I do remember my heart plummeting down into the pit of my stomach with the force of gravity as I blew out of the trench with the rest of my brothers, hoping my pack wasn’t about to explode.

Cresting the edge of the trench, the space between the French and German positions looked about as inviting as an abattoir. That first jump was in the morning. It was in the bright, reddish-yellow part of the morning hardest to stay awake through, the kind meant for sleeping in next to someone.

Hell was defined by gnarled coils of sharpened metal and bombed out craters in the mud, punctuated with long forgotten bodies of soldiers of both sides.

Smoke and mist seemed always to cling low to the ground in the small hours, which made us twice the target as we jumped.

But jump we did, and the wind gusted past us. We were free as birds, sailing through the air. Gravity pushed my guts down into my groin as I ascended. It was easy to want to throw up if you weren’t used to the sensation of flying with a pack. Or flying at all.

In those early days of the Aeronautic Corps, the Germans weren’t quite sure what we were doing. They had no idea we were sparrows on the attack. Who expects to see a few hundred men hurtling toward you in mid-air? I wondered that first time if we seemed hurled by catapult. None of us were good with our packs yet, which made it easier for those few Germans with sense to pick us out of the sky.

The symphony of a hundred jump packs drowned the din of battle. I’m not sure I could hear the bullets whizzing by us as we flew, but it seems I filled in the sound in my memory. Halfway over the trench we could finally see the pointed tops of the German helmets, peeking from behind their trench, a trench they would defend valiantly.

Most of the German soldiers were not looking up to us in the sky, more concerned about the charging poilus behind us, but enough of them had taken us in their sights. Had I any peripheral vision through my goggles, I would have known that I lost three men to my immediate left and two beyond LeBeau.

I wouldn’t discover that until much later.

Landing with a jump pack was tricky enough without men shooting at you. We heard the alarm in our helmets saying we were close to using half our fuel supply and knew it was time to land. The method for landing they taught us was to continually ease back on our thrust until our feet gently hit the ground, but in the panic of battle many of us cut our thrusts altogether until we reached a few feet from the ground and then blasted the thrust to soften our landing.

Once I was on my feet, looking down into the German trench, almost identical to the one we’d just left, I brought my flame rifle up to bear. Pulling the trigger, I set all of my heartache ablaze, but all of it looked and sounded exactly like boiling German soldiers.…

2

Idon’t remember the trip back to our own trench. I do remember we weren’t able to take or control any part of the German position. Their reinforcements and artillery kept us from holding their front line, but we’d certainly made a hell of a dent in their forces. The French command hailed the Aeronautic Corps as a rousing success, claiming we’d kept more troops alive than previous assaults and helped increase enemy casualties significantly.

I never knew what they based those numbers on. They could have been lying. They probably were and usually did.

The thing that sticks out in my mind, from that first aerial retreat back to our lines, was the odd sensation we were moving in the wrong direction. The mud-covered soldiers below us were forcing their way forward, and here we were, going back. Something about it seemed wrong. Even the order to come back was met with a mixture of relief and cynicism. No one in the French Army went back.… That way led to execution. But I suppose our equipment was valuable enough, financially and scientifically, that they didn’t want any of it falling into German hands.

That’s why it came as no surprise that dozens more poilus had died dragging fallen Aeronauts back to a friendly trench.

The sight of my dead comrades lined up, face down in the moist soil of the trench made me want to vomit. We lost thirty Aeronauts. Each of them had been accounted for and brought back. Since the army didn’t want the aeropacks mucked up in the filth, the bodies had been laid face down.

Our captain seemed to apologize to us with his eyes for the duty he was about to assign. There was a grim sadness in them when he said in French, then repeated in English, We must take off their packs and bury them.

Crestfallen, I went about my work standing beside LeBeau.

It could be worse, I remember him telling me. That could be us there, and they could be taking our packs off for us.

We unslung our own jump packs and rested them on the tables and shelves provided. That way, the steam shop workers would be able to refuel and repair the packs, ensuring they were in proper working condition when the next order to go over came in. Feeling the weight come off my shoulders was always a sharp relief.

We really are lucky, I told him, looking at the row of fallen brothers. Then fear and sarcasm took me. This is a thrill otherwise.

Do not be so angry, my new friend. You’re right to find the bright side on all things. Then the war will be over for you in the blink of an eye.

Or it could be over for other reasons.

At least you’ll have lived happy in those last few moments. LeBeau clapped a hand on my shoulder and guffawed loudly. You’ll do all right, friend. You’ll do all right.

You’re cheerier than I am capable of, LeBeau.

As we approached the bodies, the smile on LeBeau’s face never diminished. I wondered then if he somehow reveled in the death. How anyone could be happy in the midst of all that was beyond me. But LeBeau’s countenance was such that you couldn’t help but find yourself enamored by him. He was unflaggingly positive, even in the worst of all possible conditions.

Kneeling down in the mud, unstrapping the jumping contraptions from the corpses of our fellow Aeronauts, it was as though LeBeau didn’t even notice. He went about his work as though he were assembling the parts of a sandwich, hungry and wishing he could eat. There was a lack of revulsion in him I found curious, but also attractive.

That distance, that objectivity, is something I wished I could learn. It’s something I still wish I could learn.

If you helped, the work will be faster. LeBeau nodded toward the next fallen brother we had to tend to.

His pack was riddled with bullets and scuffed with filth, and I wondered if saving it would be worth the trouble for anything other than spare parts. The pack would never fly again, and I said so.

That’s not our concern. LeBeau shrugged. It’s no longer Alec’s concern, either. Let’s just get the pack off him.

Confused, I furrowed my brow. Who’s Alec?

He is. This is Alec. LeBeau ran a wistful hand through Alec’s hair before unbelting the shoulder strap of his pack.

You knew him? I remember asking. I’d put the thought out of my head that anyone, on our side or theirs, was anything more than a target made of meat.

Especially when you’re roasting them alive.

It’s weaker, but much more sane, to focus on the sound and sight of the flame rather than the charred aftermath of a man. I’d seen the Germans I’d killed that day, I’m sure of it, and I can imagine what their blackened, cooked flesh would have looked like if I’d allowed myself to remember, but my mind and memory ignored it as though it never happened.

Oui. I knew him well. For the first time since we’d met, LeBeau showed a trace of emotion that wasn’t jovial. He was somber and had every reason to be.

I’m sorry.

It’s not your fault. You didn’t shoot him.

Once the straps had been loosed, I pulled the damaged jump pack from the body and wrested it into my lap.

LeBeau turned Alec’s body over and reached out to his face, delicately wiping the muck from his dead eyes. Then, with an open palm, he wiped the rest of the mud from Alec’s face. He and I were both from Paris.

I would ask about Alec another time, when we were lying in a dark room cut from earth, trying to sleep to the lullaby of mortars. LeBeau would quietly tell me of their few adventures together, their passing acquaintances, and how they had met, among other things. But there, kneeling down in the mud on the edge of our first battle, he didn’t have it in him and I could not blame him. In return, he would ask me about Lucy, and I would tell him of the sunset sky before us on the deck of the airship and the pain in her voice when she told me we were through.

And of the letter she handed me, the one I carried.

Her final mea culpa to me. It said everything she couldn’t bring herself to say in person.

LeBeau and I went about our grim task for the better part of an hour. We’d hand off the packs to other Aeronauts and they would place them on the shelf. It took so long because LeBeau and I decided we should turn them all over and clean their faces and close their eyes whether we knew them or not.

It slowed the task, but we were in no hurry.

I thought death would bring peace to a man, I told LeBeau, looking at the lifeless, pained faces of the dead Aeronauts we’d completed our work with.

Of a kind. But not the sort you’re looking for, he said.

Looking at the blank stares of nothingness before we closed their eyes, I shivered. Perhaps he was right.

After our dirty work, they ordered us to bathe and fumigate. The process was demeaning, but at least no one was shooting at us. We marched to the rear of our lines, and there amid the tents and temporary buildings we found a tub large enough to fit five of us at a time. We lined up in front of the tub and would strip in turn when we reached the front. Then, we’d hand our clothes over to be treated with chemicals that never quite seemed to kill the lice, just before getting into the wash basin. Once in the water, we’d be handed a bar of soap and timed for thirty seconds.

As we stood in line, waiting for our chance at the water, LeBeau nudged me by the shoulder. I have something for you.

He snatched my hand and placed inside it a small trinket of some kind, then wrapped my fingers around it. What is this?

It’s a good luck charm. You’re lucky now, but who knows in the future. You need it. It’ll keep us all safe. Trust me, I know these things.

I uncurled my fingers to reveal the gift: a copper gear, wide enough to fit around a finger.

From Alec’s jetpack. It wasn’t good luck for him because he wasn’t good luck. But for you, it will be good for all of us.

He smiled at me, and I wondered what he had to smile about. Regardless, I thanked him for his gift and kept it concealed in my hand when they took my clothes before the bath.

By the time LeBeau and I had our turn, the water was no longer clean or warm, but it was better than the stagnant water that seeped into the floors of the trenches. It was even worse for the fellows further behind us because the temperature of the water didn’t change and it didn’t get any clearer or cleaner, either. At first, I actively despised the process, but I grew reluctantly accustomed to it since there were no better options.

When they reissued us our uniforms, they also assigned LeBeau and I to a tent together, along with four other soldiers. We’d done our job on the frontline, we’d performed our support duties for the day, and now it was time for our rest.

Laying there on the cot, beneath a scratchy wool blanket and wearing everything but my boots, I clutched the trinket LeBeau had given me. Squeezing my fist tight around it, I kept seeing Alec’s face, tracked with the remains of the French mud, staring right at me. I never even knew him and don’t recall ever speaking with him during my training, but there he was, haunting me in my sleep. I told myself that I wouldn’t get close to anyone if I could help it. Jumpers didn’t last long.

But if dreams had come that night of Alec instead of Lucy, I might have been grateful.

Monsieur Preston? LeBeau said, a phantom in the dim light of the canvas tent.

Yes, LeBeau? I squeezed the cog harder, remembering my promise.

Don’t dwell too much on what has happened. Worry about tomorrow. It would do you well, I think.

What do you mean? It was hard for me to concentrate on his words. I was too exhausted to think.

It is not wise to dwell on the thing in your past that brought you here. His tone was soft and matter of fact. Or on Alec. Or on anything you did or saw here in these trenches. None of it has any power over you unless you give it.

As he spoke, I could see a parade of images march from one end of my mind to the other, illustrating his point. Lucy. Alec. The flaming Germans. What makes you think there’s something bothering me?

I know what it looks like because I have been there. We all have something from before, something that frightens us. But don’t give it power. Learn to let it go.

I knew he was giving me the best advice I’d never follow. Though I should have surrendered to his wisdom, I surrendered to sleep instead.

3

Acacophony of pinging gunshots, mortal screams, and mortar fire lit up the day, and all I could do was continue crawling forward on my belly through the muck toward the bank of the river and our fourth jump of the war. The weight of my pack made me feel pinned down to the earth. The dingy blanket that covered my pack and I, hopefully to obscure me from sight, was just one more piece of straw trying to break me. The rubber strap of my goggles pinched my head. The only way I could imagine feeling more constricted was by being buried alive, face down, in a coffin.

Like a fool, I added to my burden a thin chain around my neck with the cog I’d been given as a good luck charm. It weighed me down as much as the rest and managed to dig into my chest. The pain it brought was a reminder that I was alive, and I’d found it was lucky enough since I hadn’t died yet.

I heard LeBeau rustling in the tall grass beside me, covered over just as