by S A Shaffer
“What are you wearing?” David asked with a squint at the uniform, and then David put it together. Blythe said he had a date this evening, and this black-haired beauty must have been the one he was referring too.
“Speaker Blythe asked me to wear it and—” She said, but David put his hands up and interrupted her.
“Ok, ok, ok,” he said, “I don’t want to hear anymore.”
“But you didn’t answer my question.” She said and spilled some wine on the white couch as she spoke. “Who the devil are you? Why is she here?” the girl asked with obvious jealousy as Mercy stepped into view in her flowing red. “Blythie said we’d be alone tonight.” She added with a humph.
“If there’s one thing I know,” Mercy said, “it is that you are never the only girl in the life of William Jefferson Blythe. Tell me dearie, do you know airship regulations require passengers to wear life balloons at all times.”
“No,” the girl said, her eyes narrow. “I’ve never had to wear one before.”
“Oh, but they do,” Mercy said, and she grabbed one of the vests of the wall and started helping the girl into it.
“But we’re docked right now.” the girl said as she reluctantly let Mercy fasten the restraints around her arms. “And you’re not wearing any life balloons.”
“We’ve only just arrived.” Mercy said. “And let me show you something about docked airships.” Mercy said as she half guided, half pushed the frustrated, and slightly intoxicated girl in front of her. “While we might be docked, we’re still dozens of fathoms in the air. You see?” Mercy opened an emergency hatch along the airships exterior and pointed down.”
Although the girl was frowning, she leaned out the opening a little so she could look down. In that moment, Mercy pushed the girl out the opening and pulled the ripcord of her life balloon. David heard a distant scream as she fell and then a grunt as her life balloon inflated and pulled against her restraints. Mercy shut the emergency hatch and dusted off her hands.
She didn’t stop giggling the entire way down the corridor leading away from the private cabin. David tried to orient the ship in his mind, but its halls did not match any other airship of which he knew. Several times he and Mercy had to backtrack to find a different passage. Eventually, they found a hallway that led to the airship bridge. Although they heard a voice or two echoing down the halls, they never saw a single soul.
“I think the crew is as undisciplined as the speaker.” Mercy said. “No doubt they are enjoying their own revelries in the cargo hold.”
They climbed a circular stairway that led beyond the airship envelope and into the control tower, or the bridge, as aeronauts preferred to call it. David looked around the oblong room. A row of square windows surrounded the entire space granting a panoramic view of the carrier’s smooth envelope and the landscape beyond. There were ten control consuls around the rooms edges, and in the center of the open space sat a white leather chair on a swivel, the captain’s chair. David had been in many control towers in his life, several of which were warship towers, but oddly he felt more at home in this one.
He closed a circular hatch that sealed the tower off from the rest of the airship. Then he walked along the consuls until he found what he was looking for, the communications consul. David pressed a large red button on the side of the consul titled in large white letters, emergency alarm. A bell rang below deck, and at the same time David leaned over and spoke into the ship’s intercom.
“This is the bridge. We have an unknown emergency warning light flashing. Ship’s manual recommends immediate evacuation. Please depart through the closest hatch and await emergency personnel. David closed the line and looked out the window. In the dim light, he saw dozens of shadows leaping off the side of the ship and bobbing along below emergency life balloons. He smiled and stepped up to the pilot’s station. Pulling a lever, he unhooked the docking clamps and watched the landscape around shift ever so slightly.
“So far, so good.” David said.
Mercy groaned and strapped herself in the captain’s chair. “Why is it that every time I fly with you it’s your first time piloting the airship?”
But David didn’t respond as he eyed the many switches beside the ships wheel. He flicked the top one and felt the ship begin to drop.
“No! Definitely not that one.” He said as he switched it off. The ship bumped the moorings, and he winced. He flicked the next switch and felt them rise. “That’s better.” He turned and smiled at mercy. She didn’t smile back.
The airship rose in elevation, but a lot slower than David liked, so he turned a nob beside the switches and was rewarded with a more rapid ascent, much more rapid than any normal carrier. Once he reached a minimum safe elevation, he placed a hand on the throttle control.
“Let’s see what she can do.” David said, and he pressed the throttle all the way down. The ship lurched forward with the acceleration of a skiff. David gripped the steering wheel to keep from being thrown to the floor. They rocketed over the Victorian sector with their central turbine emitting a terrible scream. No doubt the sound awoke every resident on Capital Island. In no time at all, David saw the dark waves of the channel below them. He turned and looked at Mercy with a half excited, half panicked look.
“This shouldn’t be possible!” he said over the whine of the engines. And then he laughed at Mercy as she clung to her chairs armrests with a white-knuckled grip.
David was so lost in the thrill that he almost missed the warning alarm buzzing on a control terminal two stations down from the wheel.
“What is it?” He asked as Mercy leaned over from her chair and looked at the station.
“A proximity alarm. There are some ships ahead.” She said after squinting at the consul.
“How many?” David asked.
“I’m not sure. They seem to be above us, but the sensor is having a hard time breaking through some sort of static interference.”
David angled the carrier up through the clouds. The vapor flowed around the bridge like a stream around a rock. Then the control tower broke through the surface, and he got a good view of the expanse by the light of the moon. Hundreds of gunships littered the sky. He gripped the wheel in surprise and prepared to angle back into the clouds. Perhaps it would conceal them long enough to reach Armstadi airspace. But before he did, he noticed that the ships were not flying any particular course, in fact, he wasn’t sure if they were flying at all. They seemed to be running dark and drifting with the wind. David expected York and Francisco would see some resistance during their crossing, but this was ten times what he expected.
“Evidently the Capital Guard mobilized faster than we thought.” Mercy said.
“Or they expected the rescue attempt all along.” David added, and the words sent a cold chill down his spine. Their men were not prepared for such an attack. Most of the ships were not even armed. Did any survive? He couldn’t see any carrier wreckage, but in order to immobilize a ship that size, there usually wasn’t much left in the air. His eyes drifted to the clouds and the sea below. He almost dropped down to see if there were any survivors, but the futile gesture wasn’t worth risking Blythe’s flagship.
“How did they immobilize this many ships?” Mercy asked. “Their pulse emitters weren’t nearly this effective.”
“I’m not sure.” David said, returning his gaze to the drifting gunships. “Evidently Admiral York had a trick up his sleeve. Let’s hope it didn’t cost him his life. Either way, I don’t want to stick around long enough to find out.”
“It might be too late for that. Look!” Mercy pointed across the sky toward a few gunships.
As David looked, their running lights flickered to life, and their random drift corrected into a controlled glide. More and more joined those few, and the night sky sparkled to life with a hundred airships.
“They’re everywhere!” Mercy said. “There is no way we can avoid them all, and we have no armaments.”
David watched as the ships rolled and angle
d their flight toward him. It was too late to hide in the clouds. His curiosity had caused him to delay a moment too long. He looked around the bridge for something he might use to defend the ship when his eyes landed on the communication station.
“Not exactly.” David said. He locked the wheel, stepped over to the consul, and switched it on. “Let’s hope they discovered Bethany’s little prank by now. Otherwise this message will never be heard.” He toggled through a few channels, but they didn’t hear a chaotic assembly room anymore, only static. He raised an eyebrow at Mercy, and then switched to an emergency channel.
Leaning over the microphone, he spoke. “Capital guard, Capital guard, this is the speakers flagship in pursuit of captured vessels. Why are you not in pursuit as ordered?”
David waited for a few moments, each one tempting him to veer away from the gunships and make a run for it. If he super-heated the balloon, he might be able to rise above them before they could fire. He almost gave in, but then a voice sounded from the phonograph.
“Flagship, this is commander Lewis. We were in pursuit of the stolen airships when a few of the ships exploded in an electrical pulse and crippled the majority of my force.”
“Which way did they go, commander. Those ships cannot be allowed to reach Armstad. If they do, we will never get them back.”
“That was their heading last we saw. They are most likely already beyond our reach.”
“I refuse to believe that. We will pursue as far as the border and see if we can’t intercept at least one of the ship thieves.”
David’s reached to switch off the channel when the commander spoke again.
“I’m afraid I cannot allow you to leave, flagship. We are under order to allow no airships to leave Alönia.”
David’s blood froze, and he felt icicled creeping up his arms. He grasped for words, but they seemed just out of reach for his weary mind. He opted for a bold approach, rather than witty.
“Commander Lewis, we were dispatched by the speaker himself to report on a mission you have already failed to accomplish. You were out of radio contact, and new orders were issued. If you don’t have the stomach to probe the border, fine, but don’t get in the way of those who do. You will either let us pass or suffer the consequences.”
Another long pause tested David’s patience. He was now too far along this course of action to abort. A few gunships were close enough to make out their many armaments. There could be no escape, only deceit.
“Flagship, proceed as ordered. We will regroup and fly in your wake.”
David didn’t bother answering. He accelerated to full speed, leaving the gunships behind. As he suspected, they did not follow. They’d had enough for one night and would only carry out the bare minimum of their orders.
He didn’t slow the ship until they reached Armstad airspace, by which time his ears rang with the sound of the central turbine. Finally, he throttled down and sored toward the famed city at a much more controlled velocity.
“Bloody brilliant ship!” David said, and he worked his finger around the inside of his ear to try and stop the ringing.
Mercy removed her hands from her ears and nodded. “Though, if we ever have another romantic evening, let’s take the Cloud Cutter.”
But just then, the communications station crackled to life with an incoming transmission.
Mercy unbuckled and rose from the captain’s chair. She pressed a key on the console and played the transmission over the phonograph.
The voice spoke in Armstadi. David knew a little of the language, but the only words he picked up were “airship” and “destroyed.” Mercy leaned over the speaking piece and responded to the message in Armstadi. When she finished, David looked at her with questioning eyes.
“Well, what did he say?” he asked.
“He said if he has to stay up any later to intercept one more wayward airship, he’ll destroy it on sight.” Mercy said, and then laughed. “Also, we are to proceed to the other side of Mt. Eluh where the rest of our airships await.”
“Did he say how many?” David asked. “How many airships made it across?”
“He didn’t say how many. He just said fleet.”
Twenty minutes later, their sleek black airship coasted into a docking berth, and David saw what the Armstadi official meant by “fleet.” It was difficult to see everything in the darkness, but it looked like hundreds of carriers, each twice the size of his, crowded around a landing bored into the side of Mt. Eluh.
“They did it, Mercy.” he said. “I think they did it. They got them all.”
They opened the control-tower hatch and climbed down the stairs, before rushing through the halls to the ship’s main docking-bay door. A few Armstadi officials met them on the dock and directed them to where the rest of the wayward Alönians waited.
They ran through the rain into a large bay carved into the side of the mountain. The men cheered as they entered, all of them apparently hearing part of the inquiry on a phonograph. David shook hands with the team leaders and was overjoyed to learn that they’d escaped with all but four carriers. However, the cheering stopped, and the smiles vanished when David asked,
“Where’s Francisco?”
SPEAKER OF THE HOUSELANDS
Things seemed unusual in Capital City on the afternoon of the 41st day of Úoi Season, especially the weather. Light rain still pattered atop the cityscape as it always did, but in the distance whole patches of cloud cover had melted away during the night, and shafts of rare sunlight pierced at an eastern angle and bathed the luckier portions of the city with their warm rays. One such lucky portion lay in the very middle of Capital City at the juncture of the commerce sector and the old city where the mossy stone walls of the Capital City police station stood.
A man walked along the street wearing a smart blue and black suit with his hands folded behind his back. He stood above average height with broad shoulders and a strong-featured face. As he plodded along the cobbled streets, people did the most peculiar things. They smiled at him, one stranger to another, something that hadn’t been seen for a long time on the Capital’s streets. Men tipped their hats to him, and a few saluted. Young women curtsied with wide eyes and giggled when he smiled and greeted them back. Mothers pointed him out to their children, if their children had not already pointed him out to their mothers. Boys stopped their street games and looked at him as he passed, a few were brave enough to wave in front of their fellows.
He stopped along his way at a street vendor and ordered some tea and a sweet bun. The young girl managing the cart reddened when he spoke to her, and such was her state of excitement that she failed to add cream and sugar to his steaming tea. He paid her a full sterling, much more than the asking price, and she clutched the coin in a white-knuckled grip and gazed at him long after he’d left her cart. He passed a boy selling that morning’s Voxil Tribunal. The boy greeted him in a pleasant manner and even called him “sir.” The man nodded and passed by, but after a few paces, stopped and turned back. He purchased a copy of the paper. The boy spoke in excited tones and asked if he could shake the man’s ebony hand.
He continued down the street, sipping his unsweetened tea and glancing at the front-page news articles. After finishing his sweet bun, he walked perhaps a block before entering a large, old building with a large, grumpy secretary. The man produced a piece of paper, and the secretary grudgingly granted him entrance through a sturdy door into a dimly lit stone foyer. He walked down one of the four circular staircases and continued until the air felt cold and moist. The stairway deposited him at another Foyer with many adjoining halls. He spoke to a guard and produced the same piece of paper he’d shown the secretary. The guard handed him a key and directed him toward one of the hallways.
Iron bars lined either side of the dark passage; and the further the man walked along the stone floor, the worse it smelled. Every few paces, a door interrupted the iron bars granting entrance to small, identical prison cells. He stopped at the fifth door on his rig
ht and looked into the cell at a medium-sized, disheveled man lying on a cot. A few days’ worth of scruff clung to his face like a fine layer of dirt.
“Francisco?” David said, leaning close to the iron bars and smiling. “You look awful.”
Francisco rolled his head and looked up at David with a single good eye. His ruined mechanical eye swiveled in whatever direction gravity pulled. As soon as his eye rested on David, he jumped up and grabbed the bars.
“You!” he said in an angry tone. “I have a score to settle with you! You said no torpedoes!”
“They weren’t supposed to,” David said, his smiled fading. “We lost a few from that. I’m sorry, but other than that, the men describe the mission as a rousing success.”
“They should have been on the ships that blew up.” Francisco said. “I don’t think I’ll ever have children after having that much electricity flow through my nethers. What does it matter anyway how successful our mission was?” Francisco rested his head against the bars. “The assembly denied your motion. I heard the capital guards laughing about it.”
“I think your nethers is the least of your concerns.” David said. “You’ll have to find a girl willing to make children with you first. Honestly, I’ve seen things come out the back end of a bovine that look better than you do right now.”
“Go away.” Francisco said as he returned to his cot. “I’m in no mood for talking, and if they’re putting you in a cell, make sure it’s not anywhere close to mine.”
David frowned, but Francisco only lay back down on his cot and rolled to face the wall.
“Well, that’s a waste then.” David said. He turned and walked away. “I’ve worked for two straight days negotiating your release, but if you’d rather stay here, I guess I’ll be going.” David smiled and made a silent count. He only got to three before he heard Francisco scrambling out of his bed.
“What!” Francisco said.
David heard the bars rattle with an impact. He continued walking.
