“Ma’am,” he said, momentarily forgetting Tom and whatever crisis he’d uncovered. “Midshipman Bishop, at your service.”
Great Southern emerged from the coastal fog only fifty feet above Telford’s Severn Barrage, its brick arches forming a seemingly endless line as it threaded its way to Wales. Clearly visible, a long whale-like shape lay in the shadow of the vast structure, its ramming blade projecting above the listless waves like a saw-toothed shark fin.
Captain Vaughan handed his spyglass to a waiting ensign. “It seems your brothers were correct, Mr Bishop. Please relieve Mr Pritchard at the targeting engine.”
“Aye, aye,” replied Matthew, slipping into the vacated seat that was usually manned by a bridge officer.
“Engage the enemy Mister Bishop, all six Congreves if you please.”
“Aye sir, firing one through six.”
The mighty airship lurched upward as nearly a ton of rocket propelled ordnance detached and hurled itself at the enemy Nautilus. There was almost no chance of a direct hit due to the intervening water. Not that it made a difference, the shock-wave from the detonation would crack the submersible open along its seams like a parboiled egg.
Spray from the explosions slapped against the bridge’s glass window, seconds later the estuary erupted as the submersible’s magazine detonated.
“Target destroyed, Sir. Permission to launch rescue kites?” asked Mr Pritchard.
“Make it so,” replied Vaughan grimly.
Naturally the Lanterns of Death Affair made it onto the front page of the Illustrated News. Tom was less than happy, the illustrator had made fundamental changes. In the printed version the younger brother was on the ship, the older rescued the girl (who had swooned) and the notorious Captain Black had survived, swearing to get even. Unfortunately it had all given his brother ideas.
The sight of two airships racing along the city streets had been noteworthy; it had only been natural for the great and the good to organise a victory ball in their honour.
Tom sat in the Colston Hall, arms crossed, quietly fuming. It seemed entirely unfair that Sam should be so bold as to invite Emms to the dance, and worse, that she should accept the invitation without any consideration to his own feelings upon the matter. It seemed his earlier conclusions had been entirely accurate. Girls were stupid, and so were big brothers.
About the Authors
Andy Bigwood is an artist, draughtsman, bookbinder, cartographer, and illustrator from Trowbridge, Wiltshire. Trained in technical illustration in Bath (shortly before the evolution of computer aided art), Andy has provided artwork, cartography and cover designs for a variety of fantasy, horror, and science fiction novels, twice winning the BSFA Award for best artwork for the science fiction anthologies disLOCATIONS and Subterfuge. Andy is also a published author, with five short stories in print.
Stephen Blake lives in Penzance, Cornwall with his wife Sarah. He is owned by Frodo the dog, seven cats and two guinea pigs. He is tolerated by two sons Ryan and Andrew. A last minute decision to attend Bristol-Con 2012 inspired him to stop thinking about writing, put aside all the usual excuses and actually put his ideas on paper. This is his first published work and hopefully not his last.
Joanne Hall lives in Bristol, England, with her partner. She has been writing since she was old enough to hold a pen, and gave up a sensible (boring) job in insurance to be a full time writer, to the despair of her mother. She dabbled in music journalism, and enjoys going to gigs and the cinema, and reading. Her first three novels, which made up the New Kingdom Trilogy, were published by Epress Online. Since then she has had to move house to make more room for books. Her short stories have been published in several anthologies, including Dark Spires and Future Bristol, as well as a number of magazines. A collection of short stories, The Feline Queen, was published by Wolfsinger Publications in April 2011, and her latest novel, The Art of Forgetting: Rider, was published by Kristell Ink at the end of June this year. She is also one of the founders of Bristolcon, Bristol’s only Science Fiction convention. Her blog can be found at www.hierath.co.uk, and she’s always happy to hear from readers.
John Hawkes-Reed was bitten by a radioactive Gollancz hardback as a child. He was also exposed to the strange rays coming from the John Peel programme. Origin stories are sometimes complicated.
Jonathan L. Howard is an author, game designer, and scriptwriter, creator of Johannes Cabal (a necromancer of some little infamy), and the YA SF series The Russalka Chronicles. He can be found on Twitter as @jonathanlhoward and at his site www.jonathanlhoward.com.
Scott Lewis is a Bristol-based journalist, writer, photographer and casual adventurer who has only recently started dabbling in fiction, and will eventually manage his time sufficiently enough to get his first novel finished. Until then he intends to amuse himself by writing more short stories, chronic procrastination, rummaging around old book stores and libraries for obscure myths, legends, and folklore, and gallivanting off to far-flung parts of the world on ‘research trips’.
Ian Millsted is a writer and teacher living in Bristol with his wife and daughter. His stories have appeared in Dogbreath, Angles, Colinthology and Full Frontal Lobe. He has been short listed for the Bristol Short Story Prize. Articles by Ian have appeared in Back Issue, Times Educational Supplement, Relapse and others. He has written comic scripts for Comics International. He once wrote the first leg of a round robin story continued and completed by, among others, Ken Shinn, Danie Ware and Andrew Stephenson. Good luck finding a copy of that.
Cheryl Morgan writes mostly non-fiction. She has contributed to Locus, the SFWA Bulletin, Foundation, SFX, SF Signal, the SF Encyclopedia and many other outlets. Her writing can also be found on her blog, Cheryl’s Mewsings (http://www.cheryl-morgan.com/). She is always surprised and delighted when someone finds one of her rare pieces of fiction worth publishing, especially when it gives her the opportunity to showcase an amazing woman from history.
Christine Morgan works the overnight shift in a psychiatric facility and divides her writing time among many genres. A lifelong reader, she also writes, reviews, beta-reads, occasionally edits and dabbles in self-publishing. Among her most recent novels are Murder Girls, a wicked thriller about five college housemates who decide to become serial killers, and The Horned Ones, in which a disaster traps several groups of tourists in a scenic show-cave. Her stories have appeared in more than three dozen anthologies, ‘zines and e-chapbooks. She’s been nominated for the Origins Award and made Honorable Mention in two volumes of Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Her husband is a game designer, her daughter was published in a zombie anthology at fourteen and plans to major in psychology and film. A future crazy-cat-lady, having just added #5 to the household, Christine’s other interests include gaming, history, superheroes, mythology, folklore, crafts, and cheesy disaster movies. Lately, she’s discovered that her true love is historical fiction, particularly steampunk and Viking-themed horror and dark fantasy. Of the latter, she’s written enough already to be well on her way to a collection, and has a blood-soaked Dexter-meets-Beowulf novel called The Slaughter in the works.
Myfanwy Rodman has written reviews for Vector and thebookbag.com. Her poetry has been published in YA LGBT guide Girl2Girl and her short story, “The Dreamcatcher”, features in Australian anthology A Picture’s Worth. Myfanwy is currently working on her first novel.
Ken Shinn was born in London in the later years of the 20th century. Since his childhood, he has regarded the world of speculative fiction with envious eyes, and slowly and surely he has laid his plans against it. Almost half a century later, following residences in Liverpool and Norwich and their respective SF communities, he is now resident in Bristol with his two cats, and is very pleased to be so. “Case Of The Vapours” is his first professionally-published fiction, and will not be his last. (He also owns his own top hat.)
Peter Sutton has lived in Bristol since the late 80’s, on and off, and now considers it his home. Like most authors he had a wide
variety of jobs. Unlike most authors he only started writing post 40 after a lifetime of procrastination. He’s always had a passion for books and once tried unsuccessfully to have a publishing career, going so far to get a PGDip in publishing, but it didn’t take and he ended up working for the BBC instead in just one of those ‘any jobs’. He now works for a major telecoms company. He is one of the organisers of Bristol festival of literature and has had stories published on 1000 Words, storieswithpictures.org and Hodderscape. He is a contributor to the Naked Guide to Bristol and an event organiser for Vala publishing. You can follow him on Twitter at @suttope and read his blog at http://brsbkblog.blogspot.co.uk/
Piotr Świetlik was born in Silesian city of Chorzów, Poland but has spent the last decade living in Frome, Somerset. He is a science-fiction author, DJ, husband and father, in no particular order of importance. His story “Rendez-vous with a Kraken” has been published in the Kraken Rises anthology by Angry Robot Books. He loves good literature, psychedelic trance and lager. He has a Master’s degree but it’s mainly sitting on the shelf while he’s busy working on few more stories and his first novel.
Deborah Walker grew up in the most English town in the country, but she soon high-tailed it down to London, where she now lives with her partner, Chris, and her two young children. Find Deborah in the British Museum trawling the past for future inspiration or on her blog: http://deborahwalkersbibliography.blogspot.com/. Her stories have appeared in Nature’s Futures, Cosmos and Daily Science Fiction. Deborah has a story upcoming in Hartwell’s Year’s Best SF 18.
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