by Kin Law
“Non, non, no pirating today, only moving fine island rum, made from sugar grown in hands free of oppression,” Alice protested proudly. “Ze Hook, they have bought nearly half my stock. A la mode, to buy from small, ‘free’ trade dealers like me, but I saved a chest of your favorite coconut. At the right price, of course.”
“Congratulations are in order,” Albion said, proffering her a milky bulb of liquor. “To the downfall of the oppressors.”
“A votre santé!” Alice cried.
“Hear hear!” The rest of us agreed, and downed our drinks. There was a moment while everyone savored the licorice punch in the gonads.
After the first drink, the early parts of the evening became a blur. I clearly recall Albion’s well-sculpted buttocks as they hurtled past, on his way to the eleven pubs of the Hook’s well-tread crawl.
It wasn’t the first time someone had done it in the altogether, but it was the first time someone had done it with such pizazz, hurtling from pint to pint like a man possessed.
While he was carrying on, Blair managed to enjoy a lovely evening with Alice Hanson. I caught a glimpse of them disappearing into Hanson’s ship, his arm thrown possessively under her brigandine, her chocolate hand reached down to cover his slim back.
When we rendezvoused in the morning, Elric was still floating on a cocoa-butter cloud of rapturous bliss. He almost ran into me distractedly, though it was partially my fault. I was busy counting a fat stack of winnings, having spent the evening in one of the many card parlors beating freighter captains at poker.
As they say, “Only the willing fall on a Straight Hook.”
“Had fun last night, did we?” I asked Blair flat-out, in front of the many hangover relief cafes camped near the various docking platforms. I was also enjoying the headache special, not because I had one, but because it was a scrumptious confection of English bacon and Tennessee barbecue sauce. The Channel swung out beneath us at dizzying heights through a clear sky, and there were quite a few inebriates doubled up over it, baptizing it with their stomach contents.
“My Lord, the woman is a horror,” Blair said dreamily. “She has the most commanding presence I have ever encountered. This mark, here on my cheek? Strapless heel, I kid you not.”
“Really? So far up? I mean… Ack, no, no more!” I begged for mercy. “Your business is your own.” But, if Alice enjoyed herself, it did make me fond of him.
At this point, Albion also arrived, fully clothed except for his usual stoic expression. Even with his goggles down, I could see it had been a sleepless night, and one he wasn’t keen to talk about.
Elric chose the moment to snap out of his reverie, perhaps reminded of our mission by Albion’s presence.
“Speaking of business, Alice actually had some vital information for us.” Blair said. He seemed eager to change the subject.
“It seems she met with Captain Samuel not too long ago, in of all places, the port of Lancaster. He seemed to be planning some kind of heist.”
I whirled around, shocked. To think- actual information, and we hadn’t lifted a finger! Well, Blair had, much more than a finger… There was value in Albion’s new acquisition after all. The vote was still out for his pretty little Inspector.
“Let’s not get too stuck in right now,” Albion offered hoarsely. It sounded like there was a lot to come up, but had been scraped out not two minutes ago. “I need some of Auntie’s tea… back to the Berry, everyone.”
We trooped out onto the docks, textbook examples of what the Hook had on offer: sickeningly smashed, amorous exhaustion, and avarice. So absorbed were we in our immediate diversions, we almost didn’t notice the obvious.
Where the Huckleberry ought have been, there was now docked a tiny longboat, held aloft by the ridiculous Jumbo the Elephant.
There was a note taped to it, which Albion snapped up instantly. Something tumbled out of it, a glittering point vanishing into his pocket.
“My amorous Captain,” Albion read from under his raised goggles.
“That would be you, gorgeous,” I remarked astutely, drawing a satisfyingly venomous glare from Alby.
“Despite my efforts, you refuse to acknowledge my feelings of intense admiration and overflowing love for your person. Normally, a girl in my position would draw back out of some foolish modesty, to better appeal to your attentions. I have chosen differently. To show you how serious I am in my love, I have stolen your precious vessel, the Huckleberry, with the conviction you will go to all lengths to recover it.
I will see you soon, my delicious Captain. Love, Kitty Desperado. PS: I did adore your… cute… dimpled… buttocks.”
The letter fluttered to the ground, followed not long after by the bottom half of Albion’s jaw.
“What in blazes did you do?” Elric asked brazenly, perhaps emboldened by his evening’s triumph. I picked up the letter, shaking off the aura of shame still on it.
“It’s no big deal, Prissy Jack and the others are aboard. We’ll have this Kitty whats-her-face locked in the brig and the Berry back here in no… time…” I started, only to finish staring at the happy procession coming towards us.
It was Auntie, Cockney Alex, Cid and even Prissy Jack, towing a wagonload of lumpy parcels.
“What are you doing here?” Albion hollered.
“We? We went out to resupply, while you lot were cavorting!” Cid replied angrily. His gray beard bristled, all two weeks worth clinging to his face like a hedgehog.
“Investigating!” Albion replied as indignantly.
“Right, red-eyes,” Alex remarked. Albion’s goggles slammed back down over his face. We were left staring in turns at each other’s stunned faces, and at the little longboat innocently floating in the dock space.
“Well then,” I interjected. “Who’s left on the ship?”
Some miles away, in the brig of the Huckleberry, Inspector Vanessa Hargreaves finished filing down the hinge on her prison, and with a well-placed kick, loosened it from its frame. She did this very quietly, in case whomever stole the ship heard.
It hadn’t been difficult to deduce the theft of the Berry.
Firstly, her usual loud, obnoxious crew was gone. The ship now was silent as the grave.
Second, whatever God-forsaken port they’d been docked at, she had seen its distinct brand of drunken villainy out of her tiny porthole. They were certainly capable of a ship jacking. Just like Albion Clemens to dock at such a place, she had thought.
In the passageway, she took the time to tuck the file back securely away in her utilitarian braid. It was a very large ship, but Hargreaves was well aware there were vacuum tubes and other machinery designed to transmit sounds.
She stepped out into the hall, pausing as her boot heel clicked once on the scrubbed deck.
Rosa’s borrowed clothes fit well enough, but it was in a very flamboyant style, not at all in Hargreaves’ comfort zone. The embroidered skirt and linen blouse were conservative enough, but the Inspector flat-out refused to wear Rosa’s shoes- much too high, and showed too much ankle. Hargreaves in disguise was not Hargreaves the Inspector.
No matter how she was dressed, the opportunity was too good to miss for the Queen’s agent- with a real pirate vessel at her disposal, how far could she go towards tracking a presumably airborne Westminster? Prospects were good she could simply overpower the current thief and take over the Berry herself. She took off her boots, setting her socks gingerly on the cold wood. Good, no sound. She tied the laces together and secured the footwear to her belt, then made her way wielding only her powers of detection.
Though Hargreaves’ intent was to simply arrive at the bridge, in practice the journey proved counter-intuitive and bemusing. She had assumed the brig was in the lower parts of the ship, like the familiar Gwain.
The logical thing was to proceed upward, but there wasn’t a single ladder or ceiling hatch.
When Hargreaves opened a trap in the deck floor, she discovered a cavernous space several decks deep. There was no ca
twalk or other passage; the trap simply dropped off into empty air, over hard shipping crates below. Mysterious apparatus also seemed to occupy this spacious hold, or what Hargreaves assumed was a hold, but befuddled and frustrated, she simply shut the portal and moved on.
Some wandering later, Hargreaves arrived at a conclusion: the brig was in the middle of the ship.
It made some odd sort of sense, now she thought about it. The Gwain and other ships in Her Majesty’s navy had holdover design cues from seafaring ships, but on a dirigible, the best place to hold a prisoner was dead center, away from anyplace one might jump overboard and onto a rescuing ship.
Her circuit of the deck also showed the Berry was built along the lines of a giant egg, with the cavernous hold like a yolk within.
Hargreaves had taken raiding training, and she recognized the narrow corridors and recessed panels of a pressed helium vessel: a ship with her lift contained within her very bones. What Hargreaves could not figure was the endless dead-ends, the locked doors, and the random nooks like empty bookshelves at all levels of the walls. Then there were the strings of objects, like fetishes or toys, running along every corridor. The empty doll smiles and brightly colored marbles shook her more than the fact she wasn’t getting anywhere. Finally, the Inspector had had enough.
“Damn it, ship, how the blazes do I get to your bridge?” Hargreaves gave in to the labyrinth, and abandoned stealth for release.
There was a rollicking click, as if the ship had actually heard her, and a panel Hargreaves hadn’t seen before swung open on invisible hinges.
“Doesn’t that just take the piss?” Hargreaves grumbled, but she shrugged and climbed through.
“The Berry was triple-locked, in the engine room, the bridge, and in one of the capacitors randomly scattered through the ship!” Cid was protesting adamantly. “No simple hijacker could have stolen her!”
“Cid, when I say stay on the ship, I mean stay on the ship,” Albion sighed for the twentieth time. Matters were not helped by the close quarters- the longboat was not designed to hold seven people at once. We were packed like sardines. The thin plank hull shuddered and dipped despite Cid’s best efforts at the tiny steam engine in the rear. Her impromptu crew sniped and bickered despite my lowered neckline and liberally distributed headache specials.
“Why don’t we go over what happened, Captain Clemens? Maybe something might come in useful when we confront this Kitty Desperado person,” Elric attempted to smooth the situation over. Albion looked up from the engine sniffer Cid had cobbled together, from the parcels meant for the Berry. The wad of arc bulbs and coils of copper zapped Albion now and again, when it caught the taste of the Berry’s steam in the air. The closer we got, the more the little static sparks bit Albion, which didn’t help the mood any.
“Agreed,” Albion replied reluctantly. “You were there, Rosa, when it happened.”
For a moment, I was not quite sure how to shuffle through the deck of addled memories, but then I had it.
The whole affair started when Albion chanced on the attentions of a persistent Scottish firecracker. The little redhead was all right, just immature for Albion, not to mention lacking in the bow and stern.
She was barely out of puberty, while the youngest person on the Berry was Prissy Jack, freshly eighteen last week. Both Albion and I were in our twenties, and Cid was a hale old man of sixty.
“All I saw,” I began, “Was how you practically fell on the little fireball, and apologized by buying her a pint. How ridiculous a line was that, Albion?”
“The girl is at least eight years my junior, Rosa, it was an honest mistake! We were all pretty wasted.”
Everyone was looking at the Captain with glares of suspicious disgust, although I would have been ready to bet it was more for comedic value. None of us actually believed Albion was a cradle burglar, though he had burgled plenty of other things.
“After that, I mentioned how no self-respecting pirate could keep their eyes off long enough to trip over her. As an apology.”
“You see how easily that can be misconstrued?” J’accuse!
“Yes,” Albion said morosely. “Yes, thank you for pointing out my drunken faux pas, I had no idea I did such things on my fifth whiskey sour.”
“Go on then,” Cid grumped from back near the hot engine. Everyone was crowding him in, trying to stay warm.
“After I complimented her, she started following me around. I told her off, I tried to lose her in the whiskey catwalks, I even ran into a men’s only bathhouse.”
“The one near the cocktail bar, healing baths, strategic location,” Cockney Alex recalled fondly. I could just see him, a huge blonde bear, majestically reclining in water gone white with minerals and mingled sweat.
“AND,” Albion barreled on, “she managed to sneak in and steal my clothes. Left me a note saying she’d distributed them in the eleven Hook crawl pubs. She’d paid the barkeeps to give them back to me a piece at a time once I’d drunk a whole pint each. Took me four pubs to get my trousers back.”
“So that was why you were doing the crawl. Why were you running from one to another like a bat out of hell?”
“For two reasons. One, I knew the longer I waited, the sooner the barkeeps would start selling off my things piece by piece. Two, Kitty was obviously playing for time. I just didn’t know what for. By the time I got the last piece back, I sort of collapsed. Luckily I knew the owner, so they didn’t let anyone take my things.”
The longboat shook once more, but this time, it was from the combined rocking of everyone aboard laughing.
Hargreaves, having reached the bridge with little difficulty, was fiercely conflicted. She had expected a gang of toughs for her to take out, with a combination of hand-to-hand combat and a long wrench she had found. At the very least, she expected one determined, skilled individual, perhaps a deserted veteran of some defunct paramilitary institution, hardened and cynical with the deaths of hundreds on his hands. What she never expected to find was a child.
At least, the girl seemed a child. Her hair was a brilliant burning red, the sort of brightness inversely proportionate to one’s age.
She was short, wrapped in clothes several sizes too large and from the shape of her neck, had all the figure of a plank. When the girl moved, she seemed too gangly and doe-like for anything but a teenager.
Hargreaves sighed, and set down her wrench. Then she walked into the middle of the bridge, where the girl literally jumped when she saw her. The girl swiped a ceramic figurine, a dog having a wee, off the console and pitched it at Hargreaves.
“Blimey!” Hargreaves yelled, dodging the missile.
“Blimey yourself! I thought the ship was deserted,” the girl yelped. She continued to throw items with startling accuracy: an ancient sugar skull, a stuffed owl, a cup of pens raining arrows tipped with sharp, inky nibs. For a pirate bridge, the place was littered with dangerous knickknacks, Hargreaves bemoaned. There were things hung all over the pipework, some with sharp corners.
Fortunately, the Inspector was well trained for action under fire. She dove behind a console, whacking aside tchotchkes with her recovered wrench.
“Hold it! What’s happened to Captain Clemens?” Hargreaves demanded. One of the projectiles, a round cork ball, ricocheted between some some touchy looking toggles. It settled on and tripped one, causing the whole ship to shudder.
“Hmmmm….” Hargreaves muttered. She reached up and flicked it with one neatly trimmed nail.
“Whoaaaa…!”
Instantly, the whole ship shook and tipped over like a platter from a tripped waiter. Hargreaves, having prepared herself for it, was instantly on her feet, marching towards the girl on the floor.
It was an ideal Yard submission situation: the mark, on her face, arms ready for a cuffing. All Hargreaves had to do was sit on the whelp and maybe tie her arms together with Miss Rosa’s belt.
Worse came to worst, Hargreaves would simply have to hold on until the girl gained enough composur
e to work out an arrangement.
The Inspector’s surprise was legendary when the girl twisted easily out of a hold that would break full-grown men’s arms, and socked her one in the face.
“It’s quiet…” I whispered. We were standing on the Huckleberry’s decks once more, all of us stretching or writhing numbly on the floor from sleeping limbs. For some odd reason, the ship had been floating dead still, some miles south of the Hook. Something must have happened fairly recently, because Cid’s wacky gizmo had zapped Albion all the way here. He had thrown it overboard the second we saw the Berry, still arcing an enthusiastically blue streak all the way down. The sudden absence of its popping noises contributed to a feeling of stillness not suitable for our merry ship.
“It’s quiet because you’re talking like a mouse,” replied, of all people, Elric. “Sorry. I have a problem with clichés.”
“Let’s just find this girl already,” Albion said in a regular voice. “Nobody steals from the Burglar of Beijing.”
Everyone groaned, but we marched our tingly feet over the deck and towards the forecastle. Even before we reached the bridge beneath it, the mists of the Channel parted to show a rather grumpy face staring out at us from the spacious windows.
“Uh-oh,” Albion said plainly.
“Impressive…” Cid’s hoary voice rasped.
“Your little Inspector got out,” I remarked. I fanned out a quartet of knives in one hand, good pretty little stilettos, but balked at Albion’s venomous glare.
Oh, all right, so I didn’t know the bodies of the Inspector or this Kitty Desperado well enough for pressure point needles. I put them away begrudgingly.
We marched as a group, through the heavy bolted hatch and into the dry bridge, where we saw the darnedest thing.
“Scotland Yard will take just about anybody, eh?” Cockney Alex sniped heartily. “Even one with kinks like yours.”
