The Zephyr Conspiracy

by Israel Keats

  “This . . .” he said in astonishment. “This is it!” Then, to her surprise, he turned to the pirates standing beside him. “Crewmates! Arrest this girl. She’s a traitor to the Zephyr and a spy!”

  Chapter 13

  “What?” Gadget stared in disbelief at the pirate captain as the other pirates crowded around her. “No I’m not! I found that fair and square and brought it to you, just like you asked!”

  “I heard there’s a spy among us, and I know you came here from that Aero-Navy ship,” Fawkes said.

  “I was being held prisoner!” she protested.

  He patted her down and found the clockwork bird in her pocket. “Aha! A messenger bird with the Boreas symbol!” he exclaimed. “Proof!”

  “They forced me to take it!” she said.

  “Like you couldn’t have cast it away.”

  “I forgot about it,” she said honestly.

  “You’re one of them.” He stuffed the card in his pocket. “Crewmates,” he said. “Make this spy walk the plank!”

  Terror grabbed her in its icy grip. This can’t be happening. I played well. I got three treasures and two were stolen from me. It’s not fair!

  “I’m not a spy!” she insisted. “Tell him, Terry—TerribleT!”

  Her former partner gave her a hard look. “I don’t know that she isn’t a spy,” he said. “She didn’t tell me anything about a treasure even though I rescued her. And she does have the messenger bird. I think maybe she’s a cheat and a spy after all.”

  “You jerk!” she hollered, but her voice was barely heard over the roaring of two dozen furious pirates. They pushed and shoved her to the side of the ship, where a long wooden board had been rolled out and now extended high over the city.

  Regular pirates can at least take their chances against sharks and drowning, she thought. I’ll just fall . . . and I guess it’s “game over” for me.

  They shoved Gadget out on the board. The winds whirled around her. The board bent under her weight and she fought just to keep her balance. There was no hope of running back to the ship—the pirates crowded the deck, waving their swords and egging her on.

  This can’t be it. The game can’t be over.

  “Any last words?” the pirate captain asked.

  “I do have a question,” she said coolly. “What does the machine do? If I have to die, I want to know what it was all about.”

  The captain looked at her, considering. “I know what it’s supposed to do, but I don’t know if it’s true,” he admitted. “I’ve been trying to assemble it and I can’t.”

  She perked up. That’s it! That’s my way out of this!

  “Let me try!” she pleaded. “I’m good with gadgets.”

  “If it works, this is the most powerful machine the world has ever known,” said the captain. “My father said I could use it to rule mankind. You think I’d trust a spy with it?”

  “Might as well let her try,” a voice shouted from the crowd. A boy pushed to the front. It was Archie! But now he was dressed as a pirate. How did he get here? Gadget pretended she didn’t recognize him.

  “My new cabin boy has a big mouth,” the captain grumbled.

  “She is good with machinery,” another voice offered. It was Terry, who’d gone from being her partner to her traitor to her rescuer to her partner and back to her traitor all over again. Now apparently he was trying to help her again. Unless he’s up to something else, she thought.

  “I’d let her try to fix the thing, but keep an eye on her,” said Terry.

  “Hm,” the captain said. “I need you on the cannon. Cabin boy, show this spy to the room where we’re keeping the treasure and keep watch while she assembles it.”

  “Will do, Captain!”

  Gadget walked back toward the ship, still struggling to keep her balance on the board with the winds hitting her. The pirates grumbled but let her step back to the ship. Archie tugged on her sleeve and dragged her to a room at the front of the ship.

  “Sorry about that,” he whispered after he shut the door. “I have to keep up appearances.”

  “Thanks for vouching for me,” Gadget whispered back.

  “Of course,” he said. “You’re the one who inspired me to be a pirate!”

  “Really?”

  “The way you handled your sword, then solved that clock puzzle? It was amazing.”

  “Well, thanks. But you probably had a better career path before. You could have worked your way up from the mailroom.”

  “Too dull for me,” he said. “Well, you better get to work on that before the captain gets suspicious.” He pointed out the pile of mysterious parts. “From what I’ve heard, Fawkes is pretty ruthless. Especially when he’s angry.”

  She sat down and inspected each piece. She found the cylinder she’d seen earlier and the doughnut-shaped ring. The first screwed into the second, as she suspected. She found a three-legged hinged piece that was clearly meant to connect the ring, but she couldn’t figure out which piece to attach first. She had a question about every hinge or switch that could be configured in different ways.

  At last she figured out how the first three pieces fit together. But she realized a fourth piece was supposed to thread through the cylinder before she screwed it into the doughnut. She sighed and took everything apart again. This puzzle was maddening. She put it back together with that piece in place and finally saw how a fifth piece fit. The rest quickly fell into place. The machine was complete: a rod set into a round base, with a fan at the other end and a cord running through it that attached to a spindle.

  “You can go get the captain,” she told Archie. “I’m done.”

  “Aren’t you going to turn it on and see if it works?”

  “It needs power,” Gadget said.

  Archie studied the machine a moment.

  “Aren’t you going to get the captain?” Gadget asked.

  “Listen,” he said. “I like you so I’ll level with you: I’m a spy for the Verne Aero-Navy. My ship is the Boreas.”

  “So you’re not a cabin boy?”

  “I am today.” He looked at her. “You really did inspire me to take up piracy, but I’m doing it as an undercover assignment.”

  “You’re working for that awful commander?”

  “He’s not that bad when you get to know him,” Archie said with a shrug. “If you tell me what this contraption does, I’ll make sure he goes easy on you after the Aero-Navy takes over the Zephyr.”

  “I don’t know what it does,” Gadget admitted. “I figured out how the pieces fit together, but I still don’t know what it’s for.”

  “I’ve got to get a message out before I tell the captain,” Archie said. “But you know . . . this reminds me of something else I saw.” He snapped his fingers. “The navigation room.”

  “What about it?”

  “There’s a slot in the floor, right by the wheel. I asked what it was and nobody could tell me. But this thing would fit perfectly, if you turned it over and gave it a twist. What if we plug it in and see what happens?”

  Gadget studied the machine in her hands, slowly turning it over. It wasn’t that big or heavy and didn’t look like a weapon. But I should know what it does before I give it to the pirate captain, she thought. What if he really does want to rule the world? Maybe it is better off with the Aero-Navy.

  “Come on,” Archie urged, heading toward the door. “The navigation room is in the rear of the ship.”

  Gadget shifted from foot to foot, uncertain. “How are we going to get to the navigation room from here? We’d have to carry this thing past twenty-five pirates!”

  Terry burst into the room before Archie could answer. “Are you finished yet?” he demanded. “The captain is getting impatient!”

  “Not quite,” she said, shifting so the assembled machine was out of Terry’s view. “I need more time.”

  “You have two minutes,” Terry said. He slammed the door behind him.

  The two minutes reminded her of the clock tower,
where she’d swung on a rope that needed a pendulum. It gave her an idea. She glanced up and saw a trapdoor in the ceiling.

  That must lead to the upper deck, she realized.

  She turned back to Archie. “Maybe we could swing across.”

  Chapter 14

  Gadget boosted Archie up. He grabbed the handle and pulled the trapdoor open. A ladder dropped. Moments later they were on the upper deck, just below the massive drooping gasbag of the airship. As she’d hoped, there were loose ropes dangling from the gasbag, torn by the darts from the Boreas.

  Archie went first, leaping out to grab a rope and swinging across. He sent it back to Gadget. She first tied the machine to the rope and sent it over, then swung across herself, over the heads of the pirates.

  She looked back and saw Terry and Captain Fawkes enter the room where she’d just been.

  “We’re going to need a quick escape,” she said to Archie. “Go get a sky-skiff and fly it behind the ship. Wait for me there.”

  “You got it, Captain!” he said and flew out the door.

  Gadget rolled her eyes but couldn’t help her lips from quirking up into a small smile.

  She went to the navigation room, a U-shaped area at the rear of the ship. The steering wheel was here, along with compasses and charts and various dials and gauges. She saw the slot on the floor right away. Archie had been right—it looked like a perfect fit for the machine.

  I’d hoped we’d at least get a hint of what this contraption is for, but no such luck, she thought. Guess we’re about to find out.

  She inserted the machine into the slot and heard a hiss of steam as it powered up. The cylinder started to turn, slowly at first, then gradually picking up speed.

  The cylinder spun faster and faster, now giving off a high-pitched whine. And there’s no off button, Gadget realized. The only way to turn it off is to remove it, and now I’m scared to touch it . . .

  The door burst open and Fawkes rushed in with a handful of pirates waving swords. Gadget raised her fists, expecting a fight, but Fawkes’s mouth dropped open when he saw the machine was running.

  “You fool!” he exclaimed. “You can’t run the chrono-variator without a program!”

  “What does it do?” she asked over the noise.

  “It turns the Zephyr into a time machine!” he shouted back. “But without a program it won’t know where to go. It’ll blast us back to the beginning of time or to the end of time! Maybe even beyond time itself! I don’t know.”

  He took the punch card from his pocket and handed it to her. “Here’s the program my father left us. Put it in.”

  “Where in time will this send us?”

  “I don’t know! A time when I’ll be able to rule the world, I assume!”

  Gadget started to insert the card in the machine and paused. “I almost forgot!” she said. “I found this treasure and you owe me half!” She ripped the card down the middle lengthwise. She handed half back to Fawkes. She reached her hand out the window and let the other half fly away in the breeze.

  Fawkes fell to his knees, his mouth opened in a silent scream. The pirates came at her, but she bolted through the door and sped across the rear deck. With no time to see if Archie had actually come through for her, she leaped over the rail. To her relief, she landed in the sky-skiff waiting for her.

  “Where to now, Captain?” Archie asked.

  “Back to the Boreas!” she said. “Do you know the way?”

  “We can follow this,” he said. He removed a messenger bird exactly like the one she’d had earlier.

  There was a crackling in the air. They looked back and saw the Zephyr vanish. The air seemed to collapse around it, sending waves that rocked the skiff in the sky. A moment later the sky was calm.

  “Go tell the commander the Zephyr is gone,” Archie said to the clockwork bird. He released it and it flapped off into the clouds. Gadget steered the skiff and followed the bird.

  Chapter 15

  An hour later the sky-skiff circled the tower where Gadget had started the game. She and Archie and Maggie stepped onto the deck with the glowing L33T C0RP logo. She had been prepared for a fight, but the commander had released Maggie willingly when he found out they’d gotten rid of the Zephyr.

  The Game Runner materialized and greeted them all. “Welcome back, Gadget, Archrival05, and Maggie727. Three of our first four beta testers are winners,” he said. “Not bad.”

  “Archrival?” Gadget asked, turning to him. “I thought your name was Archie?”

  “It is,” he said with a teasing grin. “Short for ‘Archrival05’!”

  “I don’t feel like a winner,” Maggie said over them. “I barely feel like a survivor.”

  “Sometimes surviving is as good as winning,” the Game Runner said.

  “What happened to the people on the Zephyr?” Gadget asked. Especially Terry. He must be the fourth beta tester.

  “Their fate is not as bad as Captain Fawkes feared. They will arrive in a thick forest, with no signs of civilization. They will have to find shelter, hunt for food, and make the best of things. But they’ll be fine.”

  “Is that the future or the past?” Archie asked.

  “They’ll never know for sure,” the Game Runner said. “But as the leader of the only group of people on Earth, Fawkes will get what his father promised. He will rule all mankind.”

  Unless Terry is already planning a mutiny, Gadget thought.

  “I want to play again!” Archie said. “The adventure was just getting exciting when it ended.”

  “Me too,” Maggie added. “I spent most of the game in jail. I’m sure I can do better.”

  “You can all play again anytime you like,” the Game Runner said. “But don’t be surprised if it’s different—treasures will appear in different places. People who were loyal to you will betray you and vice-versa.”

  “I’ll come back too,” Gadget said. “I’ll look for the two of you.” In fact, you’re the main reason I am coming back, she thought. “And I’ll always be loyal to you two, at least.”

  “Me too!” Archie agreed.

  “And me!” said Maggie. “Maybe the three of us can start together next time.”

  “That’s lovely,” said the Game Runner. He waved his hand and all four of them disappeared, whisked back to their separate lives.

  About the Author

  Israel Keats was born and raised in North Dakota and now lives in Minneapolis. He is fond of dogs and national parks. His favorite games include Portal, The Legend of Zelda series, and Plants vs. Zombies. He also loves Pokémon GO, since it’s the first game he can play while walking his dog.