Nimbus: A Steampunk Novel (Part One)

by B.J. Keeton

  That will change, however. And soon. I feel you weaken, your resolve failing. After two decades, I will be free.

  You will be the one powerless then. We will see how you like it.

  ***

  “This is not what I expected. Will this sickness ever end?” Rucca looked at Gully with pleading eyes. He did not care if his first mate saw him in such a weakened state. Any loss of authority that might have occurred was balanced by the help the man provided.

  “It will, majesty,” Gully replied. He pried the bucket from his captain’s hands and walked toward the window, undid the latch, and dumped the contents into the void. “Probably just take some time.”

  “It has been a week, Gully. The crew will start talking…”

  The bum—now, the first mate—latched the window back and turned toward Rucca. He said, “Don’t really know why I keep locking the window back. You keep filling your bucket so often, I might as well just let it fly. And as for the crew, your majesty, they’re already talking.” When he saw the look on Rucca’s face, he quickly added, “It’s nothing bad. Not yet. They’re just talking.”

  “Talk,” Rucca said, “turns into action pretty quickly. They have to trust me, Gully. They have to respect me. And they won’t have that chance if I am forever locked away in here—”

  The ship lurched to starboard, and Rucca’s stomach stayed port. Whatever contents were left—how did he have any contents left?—rushed upward, making a furious effort to escape through his mouth. He lunged at Gully, or more accurately, the bucket the man held and ripped it from his grip. Rucca stuck his face in the opening just in time.

  “—if I am forever locked away,” Rucca continued without missing a beat, “filling this bucket every few minutes.”

  Gully chuckled and walked back to the window. “You’ll get your sea-legs soon enough, majesty.” He looked back at Rucca and grinned.

  Rucca, however, glared back. The joke was not lost on him. He might have even laughed at the wordplay if he hadn’t been so sick. As it was, he felt Gully’s poking fun at him was in poor taste. Rather than give Gully the satisfaction of a response, Rucca simply said, “Help me to my chair, Gully.”

  “Of course, majesty.” He must have heard and understood Rucca’s tone because he did not make any kind of smart retort. Once Gully had finished emptying the bucket, he sat it down and went directly to Rucca’s bed and lifted his king easily into his arms. He deposited him in his steamchair and said, “Need anything else?”

  “Not at the moment, Gully,” Rucca said. He steeled his voice and pressed the wheelchair’s joystick forward. He stopped the chair and wheeled it around to face Gully once again. “Actually, yes. I just thought about this—did you ever get a count for just how much water was in the hold? I doubt the crew was able to unload much of it before we came aboard.”

  Gully nodded. “Little more than five hundred, majesty.”

  “That’s not a bad haul, Gully. Five hundred bottles of clean water? We’ll have enough water to last the whole crew for a few weeks. Maybe a month if most of them drink it recycled more often than not. We’ll just have to ration it—”

  “Not bottles, majesty. Cases. Little more than ten score bottles in a case. We’re sitting on a fortune.”

  Rucca stared at Gully. “Does the crew know about it?”

  “Of course.”

  Rucca nodded. “Post guards near the hold, Gully. No one goes in or out except by my order. Is that understood?” They were sitting on a fortune, and he wasn’t going to let those sailors and bums out there drink it away. Even outside of legal channels, that much water was going to bring them enough money to remain independent longer than it would keep them hydrated and the ship flying.

  Gully nodded. “Yes, majesty.”

  As he spoke, Rucca wheeled around and out the door onto the deck of the Primrose Doubloon.

  ***

  The ship lurched as Rucca wheeled onto the deck, but he kept his sick down. He couldn’t let the crew see him that weak. They may have been talking about him already, but it was hearsay, conjecture. No one had actually seen what had kept him locked away. For all they knew, he was some kind of hobgoblin.

  He shuddered, unsure which was worse, the crew thinking he was a weakling or thinking that he was a hobgoblin.

  Rucca didn’t have time to contemplate his situation because one of the bums from Cloud Nine rushed up to him as she noticed him.

  “Mornin, cap’n,” she said. “What brings you out and about this fine mornin?”

  She was hiding something. She was being too nice. She hadn’t bowed or knelt. “What’s your name?” Rucca asked.

  “Darlene,” she said, smiling. Her teeth were yellow and rotten. She wasn’t close enough for him to smell her breath, which Rucca was thankful for.

  “What can I do for you, Darlene?”

  “Nothin, cap’n. Just sayin hello.”

  Rucca eyed her carefully. He hesitated a moment, then decided to reach his hand out to shake hers. “Hello, then.”

  She didn’t take his hand. Thankfully. Still, he held his hand outstretched, waiting. She never reached out. In fact, both of her hands remained behind her back.

  “What do you have there?” Rucca asked.

  “Nothin,” said Darlene. “I mean, umm, I mean…I don’t know what you’re talkin about, cap’n. I ain’t got nothin.”

  The smile that broke Rucca’s lips was almost genuine. He truly loathed two things in life: liars and people who did not understand their station. Darlene was both of these things, so the smile Rucca wore was a vindictive one. He was about to get to enjoy himself.

  “Now, Darlene,” he said. “That’s not entirely true, is it? Let me see what you have in your hand. Please?”

  She held out her left hand. It was empty. Her right hand remained behind her back. She reminded Rucca of a child trying to sneak away a cookie before supper.

  “The other one, please?”

  She put her left hand behind her again, obviously switching whatever she was holding into the other hand. She then held out her empty right hand. How simple could this woman be? Or how simple did she perceive him to be?

  Rucca still smiled. It did not, however, touch his eyes. “What do you take me for, Darlene?”

  Her scraggly hair fell into her face as she shook her head. “I don’t take you for nothin.”

  Rucca looked past her and nodded toward two men who were standing near the entrance to the ship’s belowdecks. They were not from Cloud Nine. They were not from his congregation of bums. They were part of the Primrose Doubloon’s original crew, and he wheeled toward them, almost running over Darlene as he went. As he moved past her, he raised his hand and waved her to follow him. He noticed that as he neared the men, they, too, hid their hands behind their backs.

  Rucca stopped his wheelchair a few feet in front of them, but did not acknowledge their existence. He then motioned for Darlene to come toward him once again. When she had crossed the deck and stood beside him, he continued his conversation. “I think you do, Darlene. I think you take me for a fool.”

  “No, no, cap’n!” she exclaimed. “I don’t! I don’t! You’re a good cap’n.”

  “Am I?” Rucca said, laughing. “Am I? What have I done to make you think that?”

  She hesitated.

  “What is behind your back?” he asked sharply, returning to his previous line of questioning. “I would assume that it’s the same thing that is behind theirs.” He pointed at the two men beside him.

  The two men looked at Darlene and she stared back. Some kind of unspoken conversation was going on between them, and Darlene must have been on the losing end. She said, “Here,” and handed Rucca a half-empty glass bottle of water.

  Rucca smiled at her and took the water. “Darlene,” he said. “Darlene, Darlene, Darlene.”

  “Yes, cap’n?”

  “You took this from the hold, didn’t you?”

  Her eyes widened. “No! No!”

  “Th
en where did you get it?”

  She looked at the two men beside Rucca’s chair.

  “Did they give it to you, Darlene?”

  She hung her head, and matted bangs fell in front of her eyes. “Yes.”

  Rucca turned to the men and held up the bottle. “Did you give water to this woman?” he asked them.

  They stood at attention and stared forward, but did not look at him. Rucca looked in the bottle of water Darlene had handed him. Flecks of food from Darlene’s teeth floated in the water. His stomach turned, and for the first time in a week, it wasn’t from the constant lurching of the ship. He said again, “Did you give water to this woman?”

  The two men were still silent.

  “I see,” Rucca said. “I see. You don’t feel as though you have to answer to me. Is that it?”

  One of the sailors glanced down at him, then back up. “You’re not our captain.”

  Rucca chuckled. “Then who, may I ask, is?”

  The sailors were silent.

  “Is Darlene?”

  No answer.

  “Because, I should think that only the captain would have access to the store of water in the hold. I should also think that only the captain would have the authority to give that water away.”

  In answer, the same sailor brought a nearly empty bottle from behind his back and gulped down the remaining water. He then held the bottle toward Rucca and said, “Then I guess that makes me captain, don’t it?”

  Rucca frowned. It wasn’t a frown of sadness, but a frown of contemplation. How was he going to punish these men—and this woman—for their insubordination and thievery? In answer to his unasked question, Rucca reached for his pants and undid the fly.

  Darlene reacted first and said, “Whoa, cap’n. There don’t need to be none of that. I’ll do whatever you want, but I don’t think—”

  “Shut up, Darlene.”

  He then began to urinate into the wide-mouthed bottle that Darlene had been drinking from. When he was finished, he buttoned his pants once again and handed the bottle to the outspoken sailor. “Drink up, captain.”

  “I ain’t drinking no cripple’s piss,” the sailor said. “I don’t care if he thinks he’s captain or the god-king himself.”

  “Then it’s a good thing I don’t think I’m captain.” Rucca let the words sink in. “Drink it.”

  The sailor was obviously used to taking orders, and the tone of Rucca’s voice must have interacted with something in the back of his brain. He immediately reached out and took the bottle; however, instead of drinking it, he turned it up and poured its contents over Rucca’s head.

  The hot liquid streamed down Rucca’s face. He could feel his hair mat down as the bottle emptied, and he made sure to keep his eyes and his mouth shut. His instinct was to lick his lips of excess moisture, but he had to fight off that urge. He wasn’t a piss-drinking Dweller. He just had to wait until the sailor was finished.

  The soldiers laughed at him. Darlene laughed, too, and she was one of his. Rucca’s heart raced, and he gritted his teeth. He gripped the arms of the wheelchair until his knuckles were white. He felt the bottle drop into his lap, empty.

  I am not a cripple.

  Rucca grabbed the bottle around the neck, and held it like a club. The outspoken sailor said, “Oh, look out. The captain’s gonna beat us to death with his wittle gwass bottle.” He laughed.

  So did Rucca.

  ***

  Gully watched the impossible happen from the door to Rucca’s cabin.

  He watched as Rucca peed into a bottle and handed it to one of the Primrose Doubloon’s crewmen, who then poured it onto Rucca’s head. That in itself should have been an impossibility.

  However, events continued which made that action seem more than reasonable. After the sailor was done pouring the pee onto his captain, Gully watched Rucca grab the empty bottle and use it as a weapon against the sailor.

  What really got Gully, though, was how Rucca, a lifelong cripple unable to use his legs, stood up from his wheelchair and began to beat the three people around him.

  Rucca pushed himself up from the chair and slammed the bottle into the sailor’s head. Glass shattered and shards fell to the ground at his feet. Rucca then kicked backward in a motion Gully knew the man should not be able to perform, and his foot slammed into Darlene’s stomach. She grunted and collapsed onto the deck, holding her belly.

  Gully watched as Rucca then brought that same leg around and kneed the second sailor in the groin, who doubled over in pain. Rucca grabbed the sailor’s forehead at the same time he grabbed the man’s partner’s hair and slammed their heads together. The crack was loud enough that Gully heard the men’s skulls connect, and he was sure that they would be unconscious for days if they survived the beating at all.

  By this time, a crowd was gathering around the fight. No one was joining in, however. Gully couldn’t blame them. Rucca was really giving it to the trio, bouncing from one person to the next, beating them with his fists, kicking them on the ground, and using them as weapons against each other.

  Rucca moved with nearly supernatural grace, keeping the two sailors standing when it was obvious there was no fight left in them—if there ever had been any in the first place.

  Rucca slammed his fist into one of the sailor’s sternums, and the wind left his lungs as he slammed into the doorway to the cargo hold. While the man was being held upright by the door behind him, Rucca kicked the second sailor in the neck and knocked him against the door’s frame. He then grabbed both of their heads again and slammed their skulls together in a crack that sent blood spraying against the door.

  The men were finally allowed to collapse then; they fell into a heap on the ground. Gully could see they were still breathing, but just barely.

  Rucca then moved toward Darlene, who was still holding her stomach. She whimpered, “No, majesty…” as he leaned over her and slammed his fist into her jaw. Her head bounced against the wood of the deck. There was no way her jaw wasn’t broken after the force of that blow.

  She tried to speak again, but all she could manage was to spit blood. Rucca stood up and panted for a couple of seconds before he kicked her one last time in the chin. Her head snapped backward, and then she was still, her neck broken.

  Rucca seemed to finally notice that the entire ship’s crew was grouped around him, and he turned to them. He spun slowly as he addressed them, making sure they all saw how little it had affected him to do that to these people. He reached down and picked up a shard of glass, using it to represent the whole bottle it had come from.

  “This is not your ship,” Rucca said. “These three forgot that. I suggest that you do not.”

  When Rucca finished, Gully saw a strange look appear on Rucca’s face, who then carefully and deliberately walked back toward his steamchair. As he sat down, he looked around and said, “Gully, take me back to my cabin,” as though his first mate were by his side.

  Gully heard his name and pushed his way through the throng of onlookers. He immediately grabbed the back of Rucca’s steamchair and began to wheel him across the deck. The crowd just stared, and they parted to let the two men pass through. Gully stopped the chair and turned back toward the crowd.

  “Unless you want to join them,” he said, “I’d probably get myself back to work. This ship ain’t gonna fly itself, is it?”

  Without waiting for a response, Gully turned around and pushed Rucca to his cabin. Once inside, Gully helped Rucca out of his chair and back onto the bed. The airship lurched, and Gully rushed for the bucket he had sat down by the window. He handed it to Rucca, who waved it away.

  “Gully,” Rucca said, with a confused look on his face. “What…what just happened?”

  Gully laughed. It was a half-frightened laugh, but a laugh nonetheless. “I think, majesty,” he said, “that you finally found your sea-legs.”

  Chapter Nine

  The boiler room was not a very sanitary place, even for the Gangly Dirigible. Dirt and grim
e covered the floor, and the ceiling was rife with mold and mildew. The air was thick with steam and cigarette smoke, but Jude tried his best to ignore it all. He only had fifteen minutes left before he and his team had to be back out on the main deck and ready to explore the Auger’s Lighthouse, and Jude wanted to ensure he had the right people with him.

  “I don’t know,” Roebuck said, playing with the switchblade knife Jude had returned to him. “If I go, do I get a cut of the profits?”

  “Yes,” Jude said, hoping that it was the truth.

  “Why me?” asked Roebuck. He spun around in his chair, letting his stubby legs dangle in the air. “Let me guess…because I fit into small places?”

  “Well, yeah,” Jude said. He was half-convinced Roebuck was going to spin around and cut him, but the tiny engineer remained seated.

  “I am good for that kind of thing,” Roebuck said. He smirked, showing off his yellowed teeth. “It’s the only reason Schlocky hired me, I reckon. I was the only person small enough to fit between some of the aqua-vats in the Refinement Chamber. There are perks to being three feet tall, ya know.”

  “Does that mean you’ll go with us?” Jude asked. Time was running out and he still had one person to convince.

  “I get a cut of the profits?” Roebuck repeated.

  Jude nodded, wondering what Roebuck would do if it turned out to be a lie. “Does that mean you’ll meet us out on the deck in ten minutes?”

  Roebuck gave a mock salute. “Aye-aye, Cap’n Finley!”

  Jude laughed as he left the boiler room and started ascending the stairs to the housing level. The thought of the Auger’s Lighthouse was enough to turn his bowels to water, but the thought of asking the next person to join the exploration team made him want to vomit.

  When he finally spotted the Shrew, who was tinkering with a hall lamp while sitting on another Hoser, Jude’s stomach soured. He tried avoiding men like Charles Ivanovich and the thought of having a man like the Shrew come along did nothing for his morale. He would have much preferred someone like Fritz—but Fritz was still lying in a cot down at the infirmary, probably more depressed than ever.