The Mighty Airship Kaede. (The Mighty Airships of Earth. Book 1)

by Gary W. Feather

  "You shot her too?" Wendy said.

  "I-I..."

  "Abbie had a gun," Momiji was pointing at Abbie's hand. "How did you know?"

  "I don't know. I--" Hirohira looked at his gun. " Ihave never done that before."

  "Amazing," Wendy said. "More of the medicine you were given? The Venusian medicine."

  "You've been hit!" Momiji said. "In the shoulder. Let me see."

  "What?" The pain hit him as he saw the bloody wound. He almost toppled over, but Momiji and Wendy lowered him to his knees. Momiji put pressure on the wound to stop the bleeding.

  "The bullet went all the way through. Help me get this off him, Wendy."

  "I'll just cut it off with that guy's knife," Wendy said.

  Soon the two women had a rough bandage around Hirohira's shoulder.

  Just then a large airship descended from the sky. It was coming straight at them.

  "Is that the Kaede? Maybe they noticed the shootings," Hirohira said.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  Going Down!

  "Have we received any word from Lieutenant Izumo and Ensign Montgomery?" Commander Matsuo asked Lieutenant McKeon.

  "No, ma'am!" McKeon said. "I'm still not getting anything from the satellites with my MAM or the ship's AM. Sorry, Commander."

  Commander Matsuo looked at her captain who was leaning against the wall so he wouldn't find himself pacing the floor.

  "Looks like it’s back to the old way of doing things, ladies and gentlemen," Captain Parsons said. "Lights on, Commander Matsuo!"

  "Yes, sir!"

  "Descend to 6,000 feet.”

  "Yes, sir. Elevator officer, descend 6,000 feet."

  "Turn 30 degrees to port," Captain Parsons said.

  "Helm Officer, turn 30 degrees to port," Commander Matsuo shouted.

  "Open gun doors," Captain Parson said.

  "McKeon, tell Chief Grey to open the gun doors," Commander Matsuo shouted.

  "I want some officers on the observation decks," Captain Parsons said.

  "Yes, sir!"

  The HMS Kaede lit up in the dark like a flying Christmas tree and descended from its high elevation to where it could fire cannons and Gatling guns. It also made itself a pretty huge target. The airship flew over the heads of Colonel Custer's soldiers and horses. Shells and bullets slammed into it again and again. The Kaede fired back at the enemy's forces as it flew towards them.

  "Commander, I'm being told that a large unidentified army of cavalry and infantry is heading our way," Lieutenant McKeon said.

  "Thank you, Lieutenant." Commander Matsuo turned to her captain. "They're probably not friends, Captain."

  "Most likely," Captain Parsons said.

  Something exploded over them. It was very loud. It shook the Kaede and lit up the surrounding sky. Captain Parsons felt the explosion in his body.

  "Oi!" Captain Parsons said. "What was that?"

  "Captain!" McKeon said. "Ensign on the bow observation deck reports a rocket exploded overhead."

  "Rocket?" Captain Parsons said.

  "Could there be more, Captain?" Commander Matsuo said.

  "Possibly, but we need to try and get Doctor Sakusa. Lieutenant McKeon, tell Colonel Cooper to have his men ready on their horses. We are going down!"

  "Yes, sir!"

  "And damn the rockets!" Captain Parsons shouted and the control room crew cheered. "Descend!"

  #

  Momiji watched the HMS Kaede descend. Ashton was backing away from the weapon. Then she ran back into her house.

  The Kaede's stable doors opened. Colonel Cooper rode out with his mounted marines behind him. Momiji waved and shouted in the dark. She picked up the torch that the late Amber Tail had been holding and waved it around. The others shouted and shot off a few bullets.

  Colonel Cooper turned his horse towards them. "Doctor Sakusa! Lieutenant Izumo and Ensign Montgomery!"

  "We are glad to see you Colonel," Momiji said. "Hirohira has been shot. We need to get him out of here!"

  "Where are your horses?" Colonel Cooper said.

  "We kind of lost them. And we don't have the time to find them. I think they might be dead anyway."

  "Really?"

  Sergeant Takahashi helped Hirohira on the back of her horse. The colonel reached a hand out to Momiji to help her on his horse, but a bullet struck him in the side of the head. Several more shots rang out from a number of the colonel's marines. Momiji turned to see what was happening. A wounded George Donaldson was still somehow standing as dozens of bullets slammed through his body. He fell in a strange spinning tumble that looked more like the moves of a ballerina than a dying killer.

  Wendy helped Momiji pick up Colonel Cooper, who shook for a few minutes and then stopped moving.

  "Hang him over his saddle, Doctor Sakusa," Lieutenant Brooks said. He and Wendy were riding double on his horse. "We need to get out of here. There's a fresh bunch of Confederate cavalry on its way. They outnumber us marines by more than I want to talk about!"

  They got the marine colonel on his horse. Momiji climbed on the horse too in a very uncomfortable manner. She turned the nervous gelding around to follow the others back to the Kaede's stables, while a number of Confederate cavalry solders shot at their heels.

  The Kaede's guns tried to keep the enemy at bay. A couple of marines were hit by bullets, but stayed on their horses.

  The HMS Kaede pulled up the stable doors and engaged its engines. It climbed upwards and shot off a flare that signaled a retreat to Colonel Custer and his men.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  Consequences.

  Jeremiah Klein held Abbie in his arms. Tears fell down the cheeks of a man who had calmly gunned down hundreds of people, including women and girls. Now he held the body of the woman he loved. Her blood was smeared on his shirt and hands. Elsewhere, his old buddy George Donaldson lay dead. Jeremiah knew the bastard who had killed them both and wounded him in the belly.

  Mrs. Ashton James was yelling at him and may have been doing for some time, but all he did was cry. Until...

  "No!"

  "Jeremiah! Let go of her!" Mrs. James shouted. "You have a bad wound that needs to be taken care of!"

  "But--"

  "How will you get your revenge on the man who killed her?" Ellie Jackson butted in beside Mrs. James. "Are you just going to die here in the dirt while that bastard gets away?"

  "No!" Jeremiah shouted. "I want to kill that son of a bitch! I want to send him to hell!"

  "Let her go," Ellie said. "I want to help you do that."

  Jeremiah set Abbie's lifeless body on the ground.

  "I do too," Ashton said. "That bitch killed my husband."

  "Y'all could work together," Captain Wang said. "A gunman, a colonel, and daughter of the President, the widow of a respected general and inventor, plus you have me and my crew to help."

  "Sounds like a good plan to me," Ellie said. "How about it, Jeremiah Klein?"

  "I'm in!" he said.

  #

  Seraphine opened her eyes to find herself lying on a hospital bed, but not the type made for humans. A Martian and a robot stood on opposite sides of the bed. She began to panic as she realized that she had three legs and not two like a human being. Her internal panic raced through mind.

  I am human! My name is Seraphine Julie Le Trosne! I am a married woman! A French woman! Human! My husband is an ambassador!

  Seraphine tried to sit up, but the robot restrained her.

  "Relax, agent," the Martian spoke in a language that most human women wouldn't know. "You have been undercover so long that your mind has begun to think that it's human, even though you know intellectually that you are not."

  "What?" Seraphine said. Then she remembered the crash. It also came to her that the Martian was a medical tech. "What happened to m-my mission agent? Our craft i-it crashed. I remember that."

  "Correct, agent. He was killed, but we were able to retrieve your artificial body. It was damaged so we had to get your n
atural body out of storage while your artificial body is being repaired."

  The Martian pointed to the left through a glass window in the wall. Her body lay on a table in the other room being worked on by a surgical robot and a Martian medical tech. The sight made her tremble and she lifted up with her two muscular arms while she rubbed her slimmer third arm across her face.

  "Please relax, agent," the Martian medical tech said. "There is no need for you to panic. The tech in there is one of the best the fleet has. He will get it up and working for you very soon."

  "I'm not human," she said. "I am not a French woman? Yes, I am not."

  "Correct, agent. You are currently safe on the Earth's moon inside Earth-moon-base 1."

  She--the Martian--thought about Earth-moon-base 1 and was reminded that it was one of two moonbases that belonged to Mars. There had, in the past, been other bases. A treaty said Martians and Venusians would have only two bases each to monitor Earth and mine the moon.

  "I failed in my mission," she said. "Base leader will not be happy."

  "Your mother will not be happy either, agent," the Martian medical tech said.

  "My mother?" She said it more for herself. She didn't pay attention to his reply and wondered if she would be given another chance or would be executed for her failure.

  #

  Sakusa Momiji, heiress of a Santa Barbara cattle ranch and the holder of a doctorate in physics from the University of Kyoto, sat in the library of her ranch mansion in Santa Barbara, on the west coast of Japan's California territory. She was dressed in a winter kimono with white socks and was seated on a thick cushioned pillow. A book of poems by Felicia Hemans lay by her with a bookmark she had just stuck in it.

  She looked at her visitor with her one eye. The other side of her face had a white bandage where her eye should be. The man sat in a cross-legged manner the Indios used, but he wasn't Indios. Even if he looked and pretended to be a Mexican ex-patriot writer, in truth he was her secret contact with the people of Venus. He went by the name Angelo Salomon Rodriguez; she had never been told his real name. He had brought the book with him.

  "A gift?" Momiji said. The Feminine Mystique by Endoso Yasu with a new introduction. It was the book that launched the second wave of feminism in Japan. An important book for women who wanted career choices other than mother and prostitute. Japan's first wave was when women in the early 18th Century demanded the right to vote and the right to be educated just like men. Eventually, like a Kamikaze, or divine wind, those ideas spread beyond Japan and its colonies. "Very kind of you, Angelo-san."

  "Yes, Momiji-sama," Angelo said. "And thank you. I'm sad you lost your eye during your last mission. I'm sorry there's nothing my people's scientists can do to grow a new one."

  "You said your scientists were working on a way to regrow organs?" Momiji hoped she didn't sound angry, which was the way she felt. She was so frustrated.

  "Yes--"

  "My bodyguard and secretary, Lieutenant Izumo," Momiji interrupted and then cleared her throat. "I was told he was healed with Venusian medicine after his organs were badly damaged and Doctor Miller was about to remove them. But the medicine--"

  "The medicine healed, Momiji-sama," Angelo said. "Healed what was still there. You might say that they rebuild rather than create out of nothing. Even we do not have that kind of technology. Our scientists do have the technology to give you an artificial eye that almost looks like the real thing, but it is a machine that will be made of metal. If you were one of my people we could easily connect it to your nervous system and it would seem and feel natural. But since our scientists have only recently begun to map the connections and complications of the human body we will only be able to give you the ability to see with it. It will have some improvements over your human eyes, but no ability to control it with your mind. It will have controls that you will learn to move with your hands."

  "I understand," Momiji said. "It is just so...frustrating!"

  The End of Book one

  Coming soon:

  Book two: The Mighty Airship Falcon.

  CHARACTER LIST:

  Lieutenant 2nd class IZUMO Hirohira: formerly officer is Japan’s Army Intelligence now working for Doctor Sakura.

  Doctor SAKURA Momiji: Wealthy Californian cattle ranch owners, brilliant scientist/inventor, spy for the Imperial Union.

  Ensign Wendy MONTGOMERY: officer in the British AirNavy’s women’s auxiliary. Doctor Sakura’s lover.

  Captain Ian PARSONS, CO of the HMS Kaede.

  Commander MATSUO Sumiko, XO of the HMS Kaede.

  Seraphine Julie Le TROSNE, wife of a French ambassador.

  Belle STARR, CSA Civilian Intelligence Agency.

  Jesse JAMES, CSA Civilian Intelligence Agency.

  General Frank JAMES of the CSA Army

  Mrs. Ashton JAMES: scientist/inventor

  Colonel Ellie JACKSON, CSA Army Intellegence. Daughter of the CSA President. Former lover of Doctor Sakura.

  Jeremiah KLEIN: gunslinger, killer for hire.

  Amber TAIL: prostitute.

  George DONALDSON: gunslinger, killer for hire.

  Major COOPER: senior marine officer of the HMS Kaede

  Lieutenant Commander BRICE: Navigation officer on HMS Kaede

  Chief Petty Officer GREY

  Lieutenant Ronald McKeon

  Petty Officer 1st class Miles JEEVES

  Petty Officer 3rd class NAKATOMI

  Colonel George Armstrong CUSTER: USA Army

  Paul RED BADGER: Tracker

  Joseph RED BADGER: Tracker

  President Andrew “Stonewall” Jackson of the Confederate States of America.

  TOKUGAWA Sheiko: shinto priestess.

  Doctor MILLER: Chief Surgeon on the HMS Kaede

  Madam Jeannette CHUNG: leader of a criminal gang in Toronto, Canada.

  Thomas WHETSTONE: Nez Perce shaman.

  Lieutenant Edward Paul BATHURST: USA Army

  Sister Annunziata-Maria Bonati

  Furragus Gano Le TROSNE: French Ambassador to Canada

  Captain Marco Polo WANG of the Hell-Beast

  Mrs. Helen WANG

  Jessica WANG

  Jed CARMICHAEL

  Ted CARMICHAEL

  Ed CARMICHAEL

  Doctor Hans Olsen: a brilliant doctor-scientist secretly working on human medical experiments for the CSA Army.

  The Mighty Airships of Earth Timeline:

  1592: Toyotomi Hideyoshi dies. Hideyoshi’s nephew Toyotomi Hidetsugu rules Japan as the Kampaku.

  1594-96: Hidetsugu conquers Okinawa and Taiwan.

  1594-1597: Hidetsugu hears of rumors of great islands to the west. He sends a few ships, but only small islands are found.

  1598-1600: Tokugawa clan and daimyo supporters rebel against Toyotomi rule.

  1600: Tokugawa Ieausu defeated at the battle of Sekigahara and executed the following day.

  1610: A Ming China demands that Taiwan and Okinawa be returned. Hidetsugu’s response is no. The now weak Ming China does not attack.

  1701: Hawaii is discovered by Japan.

  1702: Japan begins the colonization of Hawaii. Buddhist missionaries come to Hawaii.

  1703: Japanese Christian missionaries come to Hawaii.

  1712-1713: Hawaiian natives rebels.

  1715: Japan’s women rights movement begins.

  1731: Women get the right of Education in Japan.

  1729-1735: Second rebellion of natives of Hawaii.

  1776: American revolution.

  1789: French revolution.

  1793: Olympe de Gouges is beheaded during the Reign of Terror. Her Japanese woman lover Genda Ayano escapes to Japan.

  1794: Genda Ayano dedicates her life to translated her older French lover’s writings into Japanese.

  1794: Endoso Yasu dies at 98.

  1795: The Feminine Mystic by Endoso Yasu is published after having been written in 1712.

  1809: Japan declares war on Spain. After negotiations with the Dutch and the Britis
h, Japan declares war on France.

  1818 Japan’s government is changed by influence from scholars, merchants, and women.

  1831: France and Spain surrenders. Defeated Spain gives the Philippines and California to Japan.

  1835: Women get the right to vote in Japan.

  1838: Women get the right to join Japan’s military as a woman’s auxiliary.

  1841: First Buddhist missionaries come from Japan’s California to preach to the Nez Perce.

  1842: The British Isles are invaded by beings from Mars.

  1850: Women are integrated into the Japanese military, except for combat duty.

  1851: Queen Victoria I is assassinated.

  1852: Queen Victoria II is crowned.

  1854: Japan signs peace treaty with Nez Perce chiefs to recognize Nez Perce nation.

  1855: United States of America signs a treaty with the Nez Perce.

  1859: the Emperor of Japan dies.

  1859: Peace treaty between Britain and Mars. The British Isles are surrendered, but the rest of the empire belongs to Queen Victoria II and her subjects.

  1860: Japan’s Kampaku and its new Prime Minister crowns Noriko Empress of Japan.

  1860: First sightings of gigantic flying animals.

  1862-1870: War Between the States: United States of America versus Confederate States of America.

  1866: Confederate States of America signs a treaty with the Nez Perce.

  1867: General Robert Lee is killed in the second battle of New York City. General Thomas ‘Stonewall’ Jackson takes command of the Confederate Army.

  1868: Women get the right of combat duty in Japan’s military.

  1869: Union President Lincoln formally removes the Union government to Toronto, Canada.

  1870: General Hooker surrenders to General Thomas ‘Stonewall’ Jackson.

  1871: Major Armstrong Custer promises to continue the fight. Lincoln promotes him to Colonel.

  1872: Lincoln dies of an unknown illness.

  Acknowledgement:

  I quoted from the following: Matsuo Basho, "The Narrow Road of Oku" [Oku no Hosomichi], In Keene, Donald (ed), Anthology of Japanese Literature Volume 1 Earliest Era to Mid-nineteenth Century. New York: Grove Press, 1955.