Avast, Ye Airships Anthology Read online

  Luca, on the other hand, had graciously accepted the position of head of security for the remainder of the trip, and the pay to go with it. She was pretty sure that there would be a bit of extra pay, to assure the company wouldn’t end up having to praise the scarred mercenary in front of any genteel crowds. That also avoided any awkward questions, of course.

  #

  “All set for Paris?” Luca asked, near the end of the journey, with France in sight.

  “After this trip? I can’t wait. Maybe you’ll finally get to see me perform this time.” Emily answered, holding Luca’s hand as they admired the view of the French countryside rolling below.

  “Wouldn’t miss it.”

  Colonel Gurthwait and the Black Hydra

  by Robert McGough

  A pair of elderly men, so alike in looks that they could have been brothers, sat in the trophy room of the Rodania Blade and Barrel Club. Pipe-smoke threaded through their thick mustaches as the two slowly leafed through the day’s broadsheet. The Lundgrin High Herald was one of the more sensationalist presses, having made its way on the coverage of the “Haymarket Horror.” It was a favorite of the club however, having given rather favorable coverage to some of its members in their exploits in the art of hunting.

  The high-backed armchairs the two sat in were so overstuffed as to nearly engulf the men, creating tiny forts of privacy. Too old now to go out and hunt themselves, they relied on their past deeds to ensure their continued membership. That, and the sizable wealth they had accumulated over a life-time of wandering the forgotten places of the world—a wealth they used to sponsor other up-and-coming young hunters.

  “Says here the Black Hydra took another merchant ship,” said Arthur White, around the stem of his ivory pipe.

  Howard Jennings nodded. “Heard they raised the bounty. Two thousand crown royals.”

  A pair of eyes, beneath incredibly bushy eyebrows that had only recently grown back, began trying to furtively peek over Jennings’ chair.

  White winked discreetly at his old friend. “Someone will get a knighthood out of this one, I’m sure.”

  A twinkle of laughter sparkled in Jennings’ stark blue eyes. “Oh, quite right. Surely a knighthood.”

  If the men heard the muffled squeak of barely repressed excitement that emanated from behind the chair, they tactfully ignored it.

  White continued. “Third ship in a month. All in the Port St-Lucie sky-lanes. Shouldn’t be too hard to find, I expect.”

  When the sound of quickly receding footsteps reached their ears, they glanced around the backs of their chairs to see Colonel Gurthwait quickly making for the door. Chuckling to themselves, they resumed thumbing through their papers.

  “Think we should tell him?” asked Jennings.

  White laughed. “Oh I am sure he’ll figure it out. I mean, surely the man will do at least a little research before heading out.”

  #

  Wind whistling through his thick sideburns, Colonel Gurthwait scanned the skyline with his glass, hoping to catch sight of the beast before it caught sight of them. The sky was far from clear, half filled with thick, gray clouds that looked to bring a storm sooner rather than later. The captain of the Lady’s Favor, a dour dwarf named Sergei, did his best to keep them wide of the storm clouds, though it was proving to be a losing battle.

  With a sigh, the hunter folded up his umbrella and started climbing down from the crow’s nest, taking care to make sure the sun shield did not catch in the ropes. Several crewmen were already in the rigging, readying the ship for the coming storm, scurrying up and down the ropes with a grace and ease that made the Colonel quite jealous. With another melodramatic sigh, he jumped down the last couple of feet, landing beside the squat dwarf captain who was looking up at him expectantly.

  After one last wistful look to the rapidly nearing cloud banks, he faced the dwarf. “Let’s call it a day, Sergei. I doubt it’ll be out in weather like this.”

  “ Da,” replied the captain, his voice thick with a Rus accent.

  The dwarf was less than pleased to be racing around the Port St-Lucie sky-lanes for weeks on what he considered to be a wild goose chase, but having taken the Colonel’s money, was obliged to do so, no matter how strange the man’s requests had been. Stomping off, he began bellowing orders to the half dozen crewmen nearest to him.

  The wind was picking up, and Gurthwait felt the first few raindrops begin pattering around him. Voicing a curse under his breath, he began heading for his cabin under the protection of his umbrella. He was almost to the gangway leading down when a particularly fierce gust of wind snatched the umbrella from his hand, whipping it towards the starboard side. With a cry, he dashed after it, coming within a scant few inches with the tips of his fingers before it sailed over the railing, out into the sky sea.

  As if taunting him, it bobbed and swirled just out of reach for a moment, and then sailed off in the eddying torrent of the winds. He watched as it disappeared into the gray clouds that engulfed the ship on all sides now and pounded the oaken railing with a tight fist. He stared after it in the forlorn hope that it might suddenly reappear thanks to the vagaries of luck, but it was not to be.

  As the rain began coming down harder, he started to turn and head below decks, resigned to the fate of future dreadful sunburns, when a flicker of movement caught his eye. Whipping his head around, he could see a speck of inky blackness started to emerge from the gray of the clouds. As the spot grew, excitement began boiling up within the hunter.

  An evil looking black head parted the clouds. Clearly reptilian in nature, it had two long sweeping horns that curved back over its broad skull. A half moment later, two more heads, one to either side of—and identical to—the first, roiled out of the clouds. Gurthwait cried out in joy and excitement, his quarry at last at hand.

  That cry became strangled as the trio of heads were not all that came from the gray. Instead of the sinuous body of a hydra connected to the heads, there was the prow of a massive skyship.

  Gurthwait’s eyes widened as he realized that the black hydra was, in fact, the Black Hydra—a ship, not a creature. A ship flying an ominous flag.

  Cursing himself for a fool, he ran for the prow, shouting all the way, “Pirates to starboard!”

  Around him, a crew which had been moving with practiced purpose, erupted into a whirlwind of activity. Sergei dove for the wheel, taking it from the helmsman, and screaming orders at the top of his lungs. The first mate, Jurgen, a heavily muscled man, began passing out cutlasses from the weapons’ locker.

  The Lady’s Favor was normally only lightly-armed, with but a pair of cannon to either side. Gurthwait, however, had paid to have a trio of harpoon guns put on each side to aid him in his hunt, as well as having hired crewmen to use them, so the ship was better prepared for a pirate attack than it might have been otherwise. Seeing the dozen or so cannon bristling from the sides of the Black Hydra, the hunter knew they were still massively outgunned.

  Reaching the prow, he ran towards a tarp-covered contraption, rain stinging his face all the while. Snatching the covering off, he revealed his pride and joy, his Sorin-Graph Tri-barrel hunting rifle mounted to a sturdy, swiveling tripod. The gleam of steel meeting tenderly polished oak brought a spark to his eye as he slid behind it, matching butt to shoulder.

  The pirate vessel had come on too quickly to escape, so flight turned to fight as Sergei ordered men to the guns. The captain had to struggle to be heard over the wind and rain, which was threatening to turn into a full-blown storm at any moment. Beside him, Andreaus, the ship’s bladejack, leaned into the wind with a sword in each hand, grinning with mad-eyed anticipation.

  The ships closed, each angling to try to gain the better firing position. Gurthwait could see the enemy ship run out its guns, readying to fire, their nine port side guns far outstripping his ship’s two. Swearing, he took sight down the barrel.

  The deck of the Black Hydra was surprisingly empty—likely because most of the crew was below
deck manning the cannons. A half dozen bladejacks stood along the railing, chanting some haunting war-song that only faintly managed to reach his ears. Beyond that, he could only see what looked to be the helmsman, captain, and a few men in the sails. An evil slit of a grin split his face as he pulled the trigger.

  The mouth of the topmost barrel erupted in flame. A massive .700 grain bullet went spiraling across the gulf that separated the two ships. The one drop of rain that touched it in its flight instantly vaporized into steam, so hot was its passing. With a thunderous crash, it drove through the pirate ship’s wheel, shattering the top half of it into a rain of splinters, then carried through into the helmsmen, sending him flying backwards.

  With no hand on the shattered wheel, the Black Hydra tilted frightfully. Several of the bladejacks tumbled backwards, while one man fell screaming from the rigging. The captain, a gaunt orc, took a sword from his belt, and stabbing it into the wheel hub, began trying to right the ship.

  Sergei struck during the chaos. The order to fire came through the storm, overpowering even the rumbling thunder. The two cannons launched their loads into the side of the pirate ship. One ball struck a cannon bay, destroying it, while the second tore a huge swathe of rigging down.

  Gurthwait ratcheted his rifle, causing the barrels to rotate. Taking aim at the orc captain, he eased the trigger just as a flash of lightning split the air between the ships. Half blinded, his shot went wide, instead cutting down a nearby bladejack. Cursing furiously, he ratcheted in the third barrel.

  The enemy ship had righted itself. The ships were close enough now for the harpoon guns to fire, which they did. Two more pirates dropped, but in return, the pirate captain at last called the order to fire.

  Eight balls launched themselves into the Lady’s Favor. In a heartbeat, the well-ordered ship disintegrated into a whirlwind of wood splinters and hot lead. The screams of broken crewmen reached the hunter’s ears even though he was practically deafened due to the cannon fire. Both starboard cannons and two of the harpoon launchers were completely destroyed. Gurthwait knew they were done for, their only hope being to spin the ship, which would give the pirates time to launch volley after volley into them.

  The force of the blasts had knocked him away from his own gun. Stepping back into it, he sighted down the barrel once more. He began seeking the enemy captain, hoping to sever the head of the snake attacking them.

  As he panned across the pirate ship’s side, his keen eyes crossed the hole blasted by their earlier cannon shot. Within it, he could see a pair of men rolling a barrel towards the cannons. Knowing it could only be gunpowder, he fired.

  A massive explosion ripped through the center of the Hydra. Bits of ship, men, and cannons burst outwards, leaving a flaming hole in its side. It was quickly joined by a trio of additional explosions as other powder kegs caught. The deck buckled and the ship threatened to split in half. Its mast—leaning precariously forward—began to topple over.

  The few pirates left raced around to try to put out the fires before they could spread to the main powder store, but it was a futile effort. With a deafening crack, the Hydra burst in half in a hail of fiery death. So close were the ships that bits of flaming debris rained down on the Lady’s Favor, sizzling under the torrents of rain pouring down. The crewmen cheered, even as they raced around to put out what fires resisted the storm’s force.

  #

  In the trophy room of the Rodania Blade and Barrel Club, there are all manner of fearsome creatures mounted on its walls. There is only one ship’s figurehead, however, and it dominates the northernmost corner of the room. Beneath it is a brass plate that reads:

  The Black Hydra

  Hunted and Slain by

  Sir Reginald Gurthwait

  It is the only trophy of a non-living creature in the club. The fight to include it was fierce—causing no less than four members to tender their resignations in disgust. Its inclusion won out, however, mostly thanks to the rather sheepish defense from a pair of shamefaced old hunters who forevermore swore off practical jokes.

  They even paid for the mounting.

  Captain Wexford’s Dilemma

  By Ogarita

  Captain Wexford leaned her head against the frame of a viewport that spanned half the bulkhead of her cabin and tried to draw comfort from the bucolic scene below. Sunlight sparkled on the slow-moving River Wye, and the rooftops of Little Tingeford peeked above a thick canopy of elms and oaks. Almost directly below, the stones of a small, ancient church glowed in the afternoon sunlight. Much of its surrounding churchyard lay shadowed by the massive gas-filled balloon of Her Majesty’s Airship Boadicea and its almost equally large steel gondola. The deck plate under Wexford’s feet pulsated almost imperceptibly, a reminder the engines were in good operating order, if doing nothing more critical right now than keeping the ship aloft in what she devoutly hoped was a temporary mooring.

  Beside her desk, a sound-powered phone hung in a leather holster attached to the bulkhead. A voice whispered for several seconds. Wexford couldn’t make out the words, but then, she didn’t particularly want to.

  The ship swung slightly, and a metal mooring mast, almost as high as the ship’s balloon, slid into view. Wexford’s eyes traveled the length of the stout metal cables that ran from airship to mast then down to the mast’s four massive legs. Three were anchored in a field, where cows grazed peacefully in the shadow of the airship above. The last leg lay just outside the stone wall of a small churchyard.

  Next to this leg lay a thick, coiled metal cable that, five days earlier, had been lowered from the Boadicea.

  Wexford regarded the cable with loathing.

  It was intended to be attached to a tractor near the base of the mast, whose power would help the Deck crew pull the ship to a regulation-safe position closer to the ground. Instead, the tip of the cable had impaled itself in a corner of the churchyard.

  A sailor on the ground had immediately scurried over the stone wall; the First Lieutenant had reported to Wexford that no graves or stones had been damaged. Extraction of the cable tip, however, would take several hours, and as the day had been coming to a close, Wexford had acceded to the First Lieutenant’s request that this effort be left to the following day.

  Far more important—or so it had seemed at the time—were tests the Chief Engineer was running on the steam plant while Boadicea awaited an open berth in the Royal Navy Airship Yard, where she was scheduled to spend the next six months in overhaul.

  Wexford had dashed off a note of apology to the vicar of St. Michael’s, Little Tingeford then dismissed the incident from her mind.

  Until just after midnight, when the voices began. Things had gone downhill quickly over the ensuing week.

  Knuckles rapped on the open door of her quarters, and a barrel-chested man with a shiny head appeared. The unhappy expression of the Boadicea’s command master chief boded no good.

  Wexford suppressed another sigh.

  “Yes, Barrowman?”

  “Cap’n, just wanted you t’know Miss Soaring Dove of the Autumn’s left the ship. One of the bosons took ’er down the slide.”

  Something suspiciously like a chuckle emanated from the sound-powered phone.

  “Any results?” said Wexford.

  Barrowman heaved a gusty sigh. A strong stink of cigarettes and sardines filled Wexford’s nostrils.

  “No, ma’am. She—Miss Soaring Dove, that is—says as how the ship’s well and truly cursed, and nothin’ can undo it. Which is to say everything’s as mucked up now as it was this morning. And yesterday. And the day before that, and—”

  Wexford held up a hand.

  Another voice whispered from the phone. Wexford restrained an impulse to rip it from its holster and throw it out the viewport.

  “Who’s next?”

  Barrowman pulled a crumpled piece of paper from a pocket. “At thirteen-hundred the Reverend Gerald Addington will come onboard. Commander Goss is on the quarterdeck t’ meet him. Then, at fifteen-fi
fteen, we’ve got Mr. Joyous Able Goodbody.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “Voodoo, ma’am. He comes recommended by young Shalakins, down in Engineering, whose mum belongs to Goodbody’s congregation. Apparently he’s highly thought of there.”

  Wexford’s lips twisted. For three days now a parade of men and women representing a dizzying array of religions had tramped up the gangplank clutching carpetbags and promising relief from the lunacy that had infected the ship via that cursed cable.

  Bells rang. Chants echoed down passageways. Leaping, whirling dance shook the deck plates. A shaman had thrown off his robes and attempted to embrace the chadburn in an indecent manner, claiming the machine the source of the infestation. The sacrifice of a chicken on the mess deck had caused two seamen to vomit noisily over the rail, and several hundred candles on the quarterdeck, lit by a hopeful high priest, had reduced the Safety Officer to hysterical warnings about the sensitive hydrogen within Boadicea’s enormous rigid balloon.

  It all amounted, Wexford reflected, to an undignified hustling of assorted rabbits’ feet on and off the ship. And every one had proved as effective as one might expect from rubbing vermin fur against modern machinery.

  The Britannia Royal Naval College had provided her with an outstanding education in the mechanics of airships, navigation, battle tactics and strategy, and in all these areas she had excelled. Alas, not one of the College’s great minds had thought to impart advice on how to grapple with an invasion of—Wexford hated even to think the word—the dead. More precisely, the voices of the dead that had taken advantage of a damnably errant cable.

  “Has the incense been blown out of the berthing areas?”

  “Should be finished late this afternoon. Doc says the two asthma attacks should improve by tomorrow.”