Competence

by Gail Carriger

  Rue looked pensive. Danger always made her at least a little bit thoughtful. “We have to go in, we need to restock.”

  Primrose took a breath and delivered the bad news. “This is not a land that drinks tea.”

  “What?!”

  “They drink a beverage brewed from a leaflike stimulant. I can’t remember what it’s called.”

  Rue perked up. “So, a kind of tea?”

  “Not exactly. Not even slightly.” Prim dismissed the very idea that any other leaf beyond the sacred black could be of any interest whatsoever. “One Irish explorer wrote, and I quote, that it tasted like fish scales mixed with rabbit droppings.”

  Rue nodded. “So, worth trying then?”

  “Oh Rue, you’re so very droll.” Primrose patted her friend’s shoulder and wandered away. Rue’s adventurous spirit translated to an exploratory palate that Prim neither envied nor admired.

  It seemed, however, that fish-scale flavoured beverages were not in Rue’s future. Because when they were about a mile up off the coast of Lima, Lima started shooting at them.

  Percy was not at all happy when the gunfire commenced. But then again, who is? Except maybe Rue. Percy had come to suspect, at a very young age, that Prudence Akeldama enjoyed being shot at overmuch. Perhaps that’s why she became captain of a dirigible.

  “Nothing in anything I’ve read on this part of the world led me to expect an attack!” objected Percy, to no one in particular.

  Rue was already swinging into motion. “Willard, man the Gatling gun. Spoo, into the crow’s nest, I need to know where that volley is coming from. I don’t see anything. Doesn’t anyone see anything?”

  Rue began dashing about the main deck, going from one side to the other, looking for the source of the gunfire.

  They had all heard it clearly but they didn’t seem to have been hit and they couldn’t see a thing.

  Percy, who had a decent vantage from navigation, as he should, also couldn’t see the enemy. On a hunch, he puffed them up. He theorised that higher was better, if all else failed they could pop back into the grey and seek refuge there.

  “Percy?” Rue leapt up to the poop deck to glare at him.

  “Taking us up, Captain.”

  “Why? We need to refuel.”

  “It is the customary approach, when someone is shooting at you, to attempt to get away.”

  “Well, fiddlesticks!”

  “Captain. Do you have a better idea?”

  Rue whirled away. Then she paused and picked up the speaking tube.

  “Quesnel?”

  Percy could just make out a grumpy feminine voice from the other end.

  “Miss Phinkerlington, put Mr Lefoux on the tube right away… please. Yes, I know. Yes… No… No! Yes… Miss Phinkerlington, this is rather urgent. Well, if you have concerns of that nature, you should bring them up at the next crew meeting like everyone else. Yes, I know you never attend those meetings… Mmm-hmm.”

  Rue took the tube off her ear and stared up at the heavens. Or more precisely, she stared up at the underside of the big red-spotted balloon above them.

  “Remind me, Percy, why I haven’t thrown that woman overboard?”

  “She’s good at her job.”

  “Yes, but is that enough?”

  “You keep me around.”

  “Excellent point.”

  Another spate of gunfire reverberated through the air. Fortunately, it seemed farther away now. Unfortunately, it was still clearly audible and easy to distinguish as gunfire.

  Aggie Phinkerlington’s tone turned more annoyed and she became even louder. Still not loud enough for Percy to distinguish her words, but he got the gist.

  “Yes!” Rue’s tolerant tone was rapidly becoming pure impatience. “I know that sounds like gunfire! Well, because it is gunfire. Why do you think I wish to talk to Quesnel?” She covered the mouthpiece and looked at Percy. “And now she summons him.”

  Percy only shrugged.

  The slippery tones of a French boffin could be heard after that. Now Percy really couldn’t understand anything that was said. Quesnel was soft-voiced and melodic at the best of times; under stress he became more so. Frankly, Percy was pretty darn certain that he didn’t want to understand, for Rue was blushing.

  “No, darling.” Unfortunately, he was still exposed to one end of the flirtation. “I simply wished to warn you, we are in a spot of bother up here. Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but we appear to be under fire… No, I don’t know who… No, you shouldn’t come up. You know what happened last time. Well, yes, but more importantly, you got shot! Yes, that is the point. Stay below, there’s a good fellow… I’m not being condescending. I simply want you safe. You still aren’t healed up properly. Of course I’m being safe. I’m always safe… Now, now, that’s plain old rude.” She paused and looked around. “Yes, Primrose is above decks. No, I don’t know if she has a gun. And I resent that you think she is more capable than me in a fight… Well, yes, I know the twins rather saved my life last time, but… Oh, very well, I’ll ask him.”

  Rue looked over at Percy, her cheeks flaming. Percy didn’t realise she could blush like that. He’d assumed that was mostly his job, being the redhead of the group.

  “Percy?”

  “Yes, Lady Captain?” He did like teasing her with that ridiculous moniker.

  “Do you have a gun on you?”

  “No. It’s not something I regularly carry about my person.” He patted his waistcoat pockets to make certain. Virgil sometimes snuck the odd useful item in there - a pocket watch, a pork rind, a bit of string. A gun might be considered a smidgen above a pork rind in the usefulness category. No such luck this time.

  Rue continued, “Quesnel would like to suggest that you begin doing so, forthwith, considering what happened only a few months ago, and you having returned his dart emitter to him, and all.”

  Percy gave the matter some thought. “I shall go shopping when we return to London and look for something with an ivory handle. Not too big.”

  Rue nodded, eyes wide.

  “I shall need some sort of holster. Otherwise it’ll dirty my waistcoat with gun oil and burn marks. Virgil would never forgive me. And without a holster, I’ll leave it behind places, like I do my hat.”

  “Agreed.” Rue looked as if she were trying not to laugh. Really, what had he said that was so funny?

  “I want it to be pretty.”

  “Pretty?” Rue sputtered.

  “Yes,” said Percy firmly, “Pretty. I don’t like how angry and utilitarian most guns look.”

  “Very well.” Rue sounded faint, or possibly she was repressing an inclination to laugh, which made no sense. “Pretty.” She returned her attention to the tube. “Quesnel? He said he’d get one… No, he doesn’t have one with him now… Yes, fine, send Aggie up with her crossbow if it will make you feel better. Just you stay in engineering.”

  Rue hung up the tube and puffed out her cheeks, then she left navigation without further instruction.

  Percy held them steady, floating higher than anyone liked and battling the breezes with a fast-whirring propeller and too much fuel use.

  “Spoo!” yelled Rue. “Report!”

  Spoo dropped down from the rigging and came running over. “Can’t see anything anywhere, Lady Captain. No idea where those shots came from. We’re all confused and everything’s gone pie shaped.”

  “Unhelpful, Spoo.”

  “I know, Lady Captain, I’m mad too!”

  “Aggie’s coming up top.”

  “Must she?”

  “Extra firepower.”

  “She is handy with her bow.” Spoo’s compliment was given in tones of great disgust.

  Rue glared at her head deckling. “Only if we have something to aim her at. Gatling gun too. We need a target, Spoo. Who the hell is trying to kill us?”

  Spoo shrugged. “On the bright side, Lady Captain, nothing seems to have actually
hit so far. And the last volley was further away. So taking us up was the right choice.”

  Percy grinned at his own genius.

  Spoo continued, “What if we dropped back down, set a watch all around at all possible angles, and waited to see what happened?”

  Rue frowned. “Try to lure them out of hiding by moving within range? It’s a grave risk.”

  Percy finally decided to stick his oar in. “Well, we can’t stay up here. No charted current from this spot except what we rode in on, and this is the end point for that flow. We can’t simply do nothing either. We’ll run out of fuel floating about like this forever.”

  Rue nodded.

  Primrose came over. “You’re contemplating dropping back down to lure them out, aren’t you, Captain?”

  Prim was good like that - under official actions Percy’s sister always remembered to call her old friend by her shipboard title.

  Rue was not so cultured. “How did you know that, Prim, my dove?”

  “Because that’s who you are, Captain. Reckless.”

  “Oh, now, Prim, you wound me.”

  Primrose shook her head and pressed on. “Should we wait until nightfall?”

  “So we have Tasherit?”

  “She is better at battle tactics than all the rest of us combined. Decades of experience.” Primrose did have a very good point.

  It never hurt to have an immortal werelioness on one’s side. If only because Rue could use Tasherit’s immortality to heal herself, if necessary.

  “Yes, but sunset is eons away.” Rue almost pouted.

  “Would it kill you to be patient once in a while?” Primrose had her hands on her hips.

  Uh-oh. Percy knew that look all too well.

  Virgil appeared at that juncture.

  Percy ignored Rue and his sister’s bickering, and looked at his valet, aggrieved. “Virgil, there’s been gunfire.”

  “And you here, sir, without your hat.”

  “Yes, well, apologies for that. Do you think you might go below, just, you know, until we’ve dealt with whatever it is that’s shooting at us?”

  “No, sir, I could be more useful up here.”

  Percy tried again. “You could get me a hat?”

  “I brought you one, sir.”

  Virgil produced a blue velvet Turkish lounging cap with silver embroidery and a long rather ostentatious tassel. An unfortunate gift from my mother, Percy remembered. I thought I left that abomination in London. In fact, I’m positive I did.

  “Virgil, that’s hardly the thing to wear right now. A fez is for after dinner and preferably behind closed doors. That particular fez should have been drowned at birth.”

  “It’s the last hat you have, sir. You’ve lost all your others.” There was a distinctly vindictive glint in his valet’s eye.

  Percy turned away, askance. Hats like that were meant for nefarious purposes and fraternising with ladies of ill breeding and poor eyesight.

  “Absolutely not.” I will not be moved.

  “Sir!” His valet could get very ominous for such a small cherub-faced lad. “You will put it on this instant.”

  “Why? In case I die in battle?”

  “Exactly, sir. At least you’ll have your head covered like a proper gentleman.”

  “I shall make for a most amusing corpse. That is a particularly ridiculous tassel.”

  Virgil looked at the hat quizzically. “I think it’s very fine, sir.”

  Another spate of gunfire stopped all conversation and caused most of the crew to start running around again.

  “If I put it on, will you go below?”

  “I’ll think about it, sir.”

  Percy put on the fez with a wince.

  Primrose was never very comfortable in battle. It simply wasn’t in her particular sphere of expertise. Perhaps if I had been trained as a soldier? She had been trained in household management and personal defence - but not to scale. Which, fortunately, translated to shipboard stewardship and purser’s duties admirably, but did not benefit her when an invisible enemy was hurling bullets in their general direction.

  To be fair, Rue also hadn’t been trained for battle. Or perhaps she had. Lord Akeldama had peculiar ideas about rearing a girl child. When one was a centuries-old vampire, one got eccentric about advanced education. Primrose supposed that Rue’s life was always going to be in danger. After all, there had been kidnapping and death threats when she was still in nappies. Primrose did not want to acknowledge that perhaps her dearest friend was skilled in a manner not entirely respectable, but when under fire it was difficult to believe otherwise.

  Bullets whizzed and Rue came over calm as the proverbial cucumber. Her pretty face took on a deadly serious guise. Her yellow eyes narrowed and her mind became a thing of rapid-fire crisp beauty. She issued orders fast as a Gatling gun. She was like a tugboat, capable of pulling many times her own weight in responsibility.

  In a very short space of time the decklings were spread about the ship, each eyeing some part of the apparently empty skies. Willard manned the Gatling gun with a sootie to assist, sent up from engineering to help.

  Aggie Phinkerlington was sitting aft near Percy in the poop deck, crossbow at the ready. Primrose herself was at the front of the forecastle, armed with a pistol rather larger than she liked, but deadly enough, and pulled from goodness knows where.

  Primrose had never tried to be a good shot, she’d never want to be thought sporty. Despite her mother’s token protestations, one of the Wimbledon Hive, a vampire by the name of Gahiji, had taken Prim and Percy aside at a very young age. They were just old enough to grip a pistol properly when he gave them their first lesson. “The human children of a vampire queen are a great vulnerability to the hive as a whole. I go against my mistress’s wishes in this matter, but as her praetoriani, I must insist you learn to shoot.”

  So they had learned and both become proficient. At the time, it was as an act of defiance against their mother. Gahiji had known full well what he did when he encouraged the twins to defy royal notice. Percy might think guns crass, and Primrose might consider them quite rude, but if their mother didn’t want them shooting anything, by golly they would learn to shoot everything.

  And now I’m lodged in the prow of an airship with a pistol. Funny old thing, life. Primrose adjusted her hat and reached for her special armed parasol. Once she ran out of bullets she’d switch to the darts secreted in its shaft.

  “Is everyone ready?” called out Rue. “Eyes to the sky, report in!”

  One by one, each of the decklings called out their place on the ship and their viewing area.

  Rue corrected two of them. “Nips, you’re looking port and down, much as possible, not up. We’ve got up covered already.”

  “Aye, aye, Lady Captain.”

  Prim checked her gun and made certain that her reticule full of bullets was securely attached to her pretty filigree belt.

  There was a quiet stirring of air and no other warning, and then a warm presence settled next to her.

  Prim started.

  Tasherit flashed her a quick, breathtaking smile.

  Cats. Always so silent on their feet.

  “What are you doing awake?” Prim’s tone was harsh with irritation, because she felt a spike of giddy joy so profound it hurt.

  “Gunfire.” The werecat gave her a chocolate-eyed appraisal as if searching for injury.

  “Don’t be ridiculous, you’ve slept through louder. It is the middle of the day. It’s not healthy for you to be out here.”

  “Little one, you care.” Tasherit was shrouded in long silky robes. A big wide straw hat of a potlike nature squatted atop her head. She was so amazingly beautiful, the hat was an insult to the world at large and Prim in particular.

  Prim glared at both Tasherit and her hat. “You’re in real danger. You won’t heal properly! Go back inside. Do.”

  “We’re about to go to battle, it seems. I’m the f
irst mate aboard this ship. I’m needed here. And you are mortal, the danger is greater for you.”

  “Disastrous hat,” said Prim, for lack of any other insult.

  “It keeps the sun off.” Tasherit looked tired, she always did during daylight. It wasn’t healthy for any supernatural creature to be up with the sun, let alone awake and floating high in the air close to the aether. The werecat’s eyes were shadow-dark and red-spiked.

  Rue appeared at that juncture on the forecastle near them. “Prim, report! Are you ready? Oh, Tasherit, what are you doing up?”

  “Situation, Captain?”

  “Gunfire from a mysterious and possibly invisible source. We’re trying to lure them out of hiding, see what we’re up against.”

  Tasherit nodded. “Orders, Captain?”

  “You’re good where you are, for now. Nice rifle.”

  Only then did Prim notice that Tasherit was leaning heavily on a long, rather elegant-looking Swedish Mauser. She used it as if it were a cane.

  “Where’d that come from?” Primrose asked, glaring at the blond rifle like a jealous lover. Her only excuse being she was still tetchy and it was a very pretty firearm.

  “Oh, I just picked it up.”

  “Found it arbitrarily lying about somewhere, did you?”

  Tash stroked the barrel in a highly suggestive manner. “Not really my style, of course. But we seem to get ourselves into messes on this ship, and if I have to shoot, I wanted something bigger than average and threateningly loud.”

  There was absolutely nothing Prim could say to that, so she didn’t.

  Rue said, “Sounds like my Paw only in gun form.” She, of course, either didn’t notice or didn’t care about the innuendo.

  Rue left the forecastle then, yelling out once more, “All right, crew, tell me now if you aren’t ready.”

  Nothing but tense silence met that.

  “Percy,” Rue barked as she moved to take up her position in the exact middle of the main deck. “Depuff on my mark. Three, two, one, puff!”

  They sank downwards.

  The rat-tat-tat of gunfire sang out a few minutes later.

  And then… There! Primrose spotted their enemy, dead ahead and down slightly to the left. It was a warship of some ilk, unlike anything Primrose had ever seen before. It bore absolutely no resemblance to the standard Gifford-model dirigible that had started the mad craze to float some fifty years ago.