Avast, Ye Airships Anthology Read online

  Her bitter thoughts were brusquely interrupted by the most unromantic sound of a siren going off in the communication tubes and erupting from the brass funnel above her head. Colonel Hazelhold jumped up from her armchair, her hands reaching instinctively for the pistols strapped to the twin belts that decorated her uniform.

  “Incoming ship!” the voice of Captain Arabald boomed from the communication tubes, echoing throughout cabins and corridors. “All hands on deck! All military personnel to the bridge!”

  Colonel Hazelhold’s lips twitched in disgust. She wasn’t used to taking orders from a captain. But aboard an airship of the Imperial Fleet, all troops, whether regulars or passengers, were at the command of the ship’s leader.

  She gave Isabella a curt nod, marched out of the cabin, and locked the door behind her. A moment later, her rushing footsteps pounded down the corridor and up the stairs.

  #

  “Imperial ship, straight over our heads!”

  Captain Jack Coggs of the Black Buzzard tipped his tricorn over his left ear and shouted over the deafening sound of the engines.

  “Double the speed! Increase altitude! Prepare grappling hooks! Get ready to board this beauty!”

  His words were met with cheers and aye-ayes, and a belch of dark smoke from the Buzzard’s furnace. The smaller ship burst out of the cloud that had kept it hidden from view, and darted in pursuit of the imperial vessel, buzzing and whirring from every valve and hinge.

  On its deck, below the balloon that kept it in the air, a handful of men in colorful clothes were readying their pistols, aiming them at the still distant ship. Below the deck, the Buzzard’s only gunner, Steve McSteam, was loading the guns with his special grappling hooks, meant to grab hold of the enemy ship and wheel her in, to bring its treasures closer to hand. On the bridge, Captain Coggs had taken the wheel into his own hands and was pushing switches and pulling levers to adjust her speed and altitude.

  The skies above Chipateria were known for their daring pirates, ready to attack any ship that might fly by. The imperial vessel did not, therefore, waste time in trying to ascertain the identity of the approaching ship. A siren, loud enough to be heard from the Buzzard, rallied the troops it had aboard, and a burst of cannonballs immediately followed.

  “Watch out, boys, the Empire sends its regards!” Captain Coggs shouted, deftly maneuvering the Buzzard up and sideways, to keep it on the imperial ship’s tail, where its cannons couldn’t aim. The larger ship turned, trying to keep the Buzzard in view of its starboard cannons, but it was too slow, its movements hindered by its bulk and its heavy cargo. The Buzzard zipped behind it in a crazy game of tag.

  “This is Captain Arabald of the Glass Maiden!” a voice boomed from the larger ship, magnified by the communication funnels. “You are approaching an imperial airship. Surrender now, and your lives will be spared.”

  Captain Coggs burst into a fit of laughter.

  “They’re taking us for idiots,” First Mate Fumes noticed, readying his gun and aiming it at the imperial vessel. “Want me to take them down now? One well-aimed shot at that balloon filled with hydrogen is all it takes.”

  “Not before we take their treasure, Fumes. Get ready to shoot some soldiers, we’re closing in. McSteam, we’ll be in position in five! Four! Three!”

  The Buzzard doubled its speed, advancing along the balloon that kept the Glass Maiden in the air, until the two ships were side by side.

  “Two! One!”

  The Buzzard suddenly dropped in altitude as McSteam pulled a lever on the firing mechanism, making its five portside cannons release their grappling hooks all at once. Five sturdy ropes tied the Buzzard to the Glass Maiden as the pirate ship hovered below the imperial ship’s line of fire.

  Captain Coggs released the wheel into the hands of his helmsman and drew his pistols, shouting at his men to follow him. Nimble as monkeys, the pirates climbed the ropes onto the imperial ship.

  They were met by a squadron of soldiers with muskets ready. Guns fired, releasing smoke and bullets. Blood splattered on the precious wooden panels and wide windows of the Glass Maiden. Soldiers and pirates alike fell in agony, but for every bullet the soldiers had ready, the pirates had three. Shooting with both hands and drawing charged pistols from their belts one after another, the pirates quickly incapacitated their enemy.

  In a matter of seconds, the soldiers were lying on the ground, holding their shoulders and arms where they’d been hit, trying to stop the blood flowing out of their fresh wounds. The pirates didn’t bother to tie them up. They broke up into groups, one headed for the engine room to ransack its supplies of coal, another headed for the cargo area to load whatever wares the ship transported onto the Buzzard.

  Captain Coggs and First Mate Fumes ran to Captain Arabald’s cabin and helped themselves to whatever they could find; from Port wine and fine cigars, to maps and sextant, and a compass in a mahogany box. The looting was swift and in under half an hour the pirates were gone, sliding back down the ropes to their ship and severing ties with the Glass Maiden.

  Captain Coggs took the wheel once more and the Buzzard zipped back into the clouds below the imperial ship, disappearing as if it had never existed. In their rush, however, the pirates didn’t notice they’d taken on a stowaway.

  #

  The woodwork had not failed Isabella. There was indeed nothing in the corner she’d been inspecting, but there was something on a panel behind Colonel Hazelhold’s armchair.

  An elephant’s tusk turned forty-nine degrees to the right, a tiger’s tail rotated counterclockwise for a whole three hundred and sixty degrees, a hunter’s rifle nudged downward by two degrees and one final push on the center of the engraved sun, and a panel slid open to reveal a sturdy oak door that opened outward into open air.

  A gust of wind greeted Isabella as she stepped outside, onto a narrow ledge circling the ship’s hull. Loose strands of copper-colored hair, freed from the tight bun imposed by the austere fashion of genteel society, brushed against her cheeks as she grabbed tightly onto the metal handrail suspended some three feet above the ledge.

  A moment later, the ship’s guns went off like deafening thunder.

  She held on to the handrail, unwilling to relinquish her freedom for the safety inside. A second burst of gunfire made her skirt fly most improperly as a cannonball erupted from just below her feet. She looked about for the enemy, but only a loud buzz betrayed the existence of another ship.

  The next round of gunfire she heard was of pistols, and sharp cries told her that their soldiers had been hit. For a moment, she thought she recognized Colonel Hazelhold’s voice in the commotion.

  She proceeded along the ledge, turning around the prow of the ship. She could see, now, a small vessel below her feet, just below the line of fire of the Glass Maiden’s guns, tethered to the imperial ship with long, sturdy ropes.

  It was, no doubt, a pirate ship.

  Above her head, imperial soldiers were screaming in pain.

  She glanced behind her, at a world under her father’s dominion, where the threat of an unpleasant marriage hung above her head. Before her, on the pirate ship, there was danger—to her person, as well as to her innocence, if the forbidden romances she’d read spoke the truth. But there was also freedom.

  Carefully, glancing down at the sea of clouds below, she climbed up onto the handrail. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes to think through her options one more time, opened them again, and jumped, reaching for a rope directly in front of her.

  #

  The flying island of Rumnia was the perfect pirate den. Hidden in the skies above Chipateria, and constantly changing its position, it could only be found by pirates who knew where it was going to be next. Several ships were docked there to exchange supplies and let the men enjoy the pleasures of its seven taverns.

  Captain Coggs’s ship was always welcome, as was his crew, and it was said the seven tavern keepers fought every night for the captain’s generosity, as did the tavern wenc
hes. Captain Coggs was young—not yet thirty years of age—and devilishly handsome, in spite of the deep scar dug into his left cheek.

  He had a nice voice too, and was known to sing a pretty ballad when he’d had enough of Boozemaster Swine’s special brew. To top it off, he was rich—having amassed the most treasure of all the captains that visited Rumnia Island—and he was generous, always ready to give a gold coin where silver would suffice.

  He had only one flaw in the eyes of the islanders. He liked to spend more time in the engine room than in the taverns.

  But that was never the case on the first night after a successful raid, when all the crew was celebrating. So, as soon as they docked, at nightfall, the Buzzard was left deserted and unguarded, its gold making swift legs toward the nearest tavern.

  From her hiding place, Isabella waited for the sounds of voices and footsteps to die down. And she waited half an hour more, just to make sure she’d be safe, counting the seconds by her heartbeats.

  Her father’s business associates had been boring and unpleasant indeed, but judging by what she’d heard in the few hours since she’d stolen onboard the Buzzard, it seemed the pirates she’d ended up with were far worse, worse indeed than even the scariest of the novels she’d read.

  It seemed every other word they uttered was a curse word, and even the words in between sounded rude and vulgar, though she was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt because of all the technical terms she wasn’t familiar with.

  She was beginning to think that she’d made a mistake. But then, as long as they didn’t see her, here—at least—she could keep her freedom. Though it was little freedom indeed, in the tiny closet where she was hiding.

  At the end of half an hour of perfect silence, Isabella pushed open the door of her hiding place, looked out into the deserted corridor, took a deep breath and set about exploring the ship.

  Perhaps the smartest thing to do would have been to sneak off the ship and find some less dangerous place to spend the night. Perhaps it would have been wise to find a ship bound for the continent below; for instance, one of the smaller trading vessels that the tavern keepers used to get supplies. And perhaps, this was what she would have done, had she not stumbled straight into the engine room.

  Engines had always been her weakness, even more so than the forbidden romances she read at the Pensionnat. A lady had no business soiling herself with soot, as Madame Belchagrin used to say, and so the scientific journals she read were equally forbidden, but she’d done her best to keep herself well informed on the subject.

  Still, she’d never seen a real engine before, only diagrams that didn’t quite satisfy her appetite for knowledge. The Buzzard’s engine possessed, therefore, an inescapable attraction. She could not leave the ship without examining the tangle of pipes that constituted the ship’s innards.

  She had to see them, touch them, test them. Nothing in here fit the neat diagrams she’d seen. The entire place was a mess. Dust and grime covered the whole room, and rust was beginning to eat at some of the screws holding things together.

  Things that should not have been connected were tied together, things that should have been connected were tangled and clogged. Her heart ached to see the engine and pipes in such a state.

  Her mind raced over the diagrams in her head, over the tips and tricks she’d committed to memory, over hundreds of pages of periodicals read by candlelight with her heart racing in fear of the terrible Madame Belchagrin.

  Before she knew it, her hands had reached for a wrench and she was working on improving the engine, on modifying it, on fixing it, her mind already concocting schemes that would double its power and speed.

  Around midnight, there were footsteps on board, but Isabella didn’t hear them. She’d made a fine mess of herself, her muslin dress covered in oil and soot, and her copper curls loosed from the constraints of the bun that had held them properly at the back of her head. She looked like no lady—that much was certain.

  But the man who walked in and disturbed her certainly looked like no gentleman either. His clothes were in a state of disarray, with his coat and shirt unbuttoned and stained with rum, the smell of which wafted from him like cheap perfume. His long, dark hair was tied back in a messy ponytail, almost as mussed as her own hair. And his face—though handsome, and not without an air of nobility to its features—was covered by at least three days’ worth of stubble, and marked by a deep scar on his left cheek.

  Furthermore, the man swore like no gentleman, and he spent the first five minutes after walking in deeply engaged in this occupation, much to Isabella’s consternation, before he interrupted his string of invectives with the words, “What, in the Devil’s name, are you doing to my engine?”

  Isabella thought it best not to give him time to resume his cursing, and hurried to explain exactly what she was doing, in a string of technical terms that betrayed long familiarity with her forbidden collection of scientific journals.

  This effusion left the man speechless, his mouth wide open and his jaw dropping. He didn’t seem to regain the ability to curse until after she’d finished.

  “By all the cogs in Beelzebub’s butt,” he said in answer to her explanation, “I’ll be damned if I understood a thing! Listen, Missy, I don’t care who you are, or how you got on my ship, but I built that engine myself and I won’t let anyone mess with it. So put down that wrench nicely, or I’ll shoot you.”

  And he accompanied his words by reaching for his gun, though, judging by how unsteady his legs were, it was not certain whether he could aim.

  The gesture was still menacing enough to make Isabella lower her wrench. She bent down and left it on the floor, and pushed it away with her foot to appease him.

  “Good,” the man said. “Now go to some sailor’s bed, where you belong, and leave my ship alone.”

  “I beg your pardon,” Isabella answered sharply, her cheeks burning with his insult, “but I think I belong here, with that wrench in my hands fixing your mess of an engine.”

  And she proceeded to explain, in just as baffling terms as before, everything that he’d done wrong in building the thing. A lesser man than the gentleman before her might have been enraged by such criticism, but he actually seemed to begin to understand her and her jargon.

  He came closer to look at what she’d done. The smell of rum wafting from him made her dizzy as he leaned over her shoulder to inspect the pipes. She wished she’d kept the wrench to use as a weapon against him, in case he turned violent, but he seemed mollified by what he saw. Even his swearing had lost its intensity, and some of his curses sounded almost appreciative.

  “Look, lady, you obviously know a few things,” he finally said. “And I wouldn’t be a gentleman if I were to throw you out in a place like Rumnia.

  “Perhaps we should start over. I’m Captain Jack Coggs of the Black Buzzard and this is my ship.”

  He gave her an awkward bow and took her hand, leaning in to kiss her grimy fingers.

  “And I’m Isabella Warlyss, runaway daughter of Governor Warlyss of Chipateria and I’m in need of a place to stay as much as this ship is in need of a good mechanic.”

  “Warlyss...” Captain Coggs said with a frown. “I don’t think you’ll find anyone willing to risk his neck to take you on board, not with your daddy hunting us down like a madman if we do.”

  “I was thinking a brave pirate captain like yourself wouldn’t be afraid of my father or of anyone else.”

  “It’s what you’d do to my ship that I’m afraid of,” Captain Coggs answered, scratching his rugged jaw. “And it looks like you’ve been busy already.”

  “I can make this the fastest ship you’ve ever seen. Faster than any ship in the Imperial Fleet,” Isabella hurried to assure him. “You’ve done a great job building it, and with the improvements I’ve made and a few more tweaks, we could be unbeatable. Just let me stay.”

  Captain Coggs gave her a long look, scratching his chin once more.

  “And you’ll w
ant your own cabin too, I reckon,” he complained. “I’m not saying ‘yes’ until I see what this ol’ girl can do. And if you’ve messed it up, I’ll have you walk the plank above your daddy’s mansion, understand? There’s a merchant vessel coming into Chipateria two days from now. We’ll test your ‘improvements’ then. They’d better be good.”

  #

  “Imperial ship, straight over our heads!”

  The Black Buzzard darted noiselessly out of the cloud that had been hiding it. The imperial ship greeted it with a burst of gunfire, but Captain Coggs quickly maneuvered the Buzzard out of harm’s way and on the ship’s tail. He made the smaller vessel dance around the slower merchant ship, taunting it. A low purring rose from the pipes as the engine reached its top speed.

  “Looks like we got ourselves a new mechanic,” Captain Coggs said, nodding to Isabella. “McSteam, get ready to fire the grappling hooks! We’ll be in position in five! Four! Three! Two! One!”

  Plunder in the Valley

  by Libby A. Smith

  “I’m just a poor, wayfarin’ stranger, travelin’ through this world of woe…” When Miss Bea stopped singing, so did the rest of the choir, followed by the congregation. Not only was she the unofficial church lady, she was the town matron. It wouldn’t do to keep singing if she wasn’t.

  Instead, she tilted her head, listening to a distinct chugga-chugga sound getting louder and louder. “What is that racket?”

  Constable Vernon Hicks dashed out the sanctuary door. “Anyone expecting something by Airship Express?” he called back.

  “On a Sunday? Ain’t fittin!” Miss Bea announced. All adults muttered their agreement as she walked from the choir loft down the aisle. The church had no choir robes, so she wore her Sunday-best apron which had been handed down from her grandmother. Covered with barely-faded flowers, it’d been made from store bought fabric.

  “That airship is black,” Vern said, scratching his head.