by E. J. Blaine
Airship Daedalus
Assassins of the Lost Kingdom
By E.J. Blaine
* * *
FIRST EDITION
© Copyright 2016 E.J. Blaine & Deep7 Press. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.
Based on the Airship Daedalus / AEGIS Tales setting and characters by Todd Downing and published in various media by Deep7 Press. Airship Daedalus™ and AEGIS Tales™ are trademarks of Deep7 Press.
Deep7 Press is a subsidiary of Despot Media, LLC
1214 Woods Rd SE Port Orchard, WA 98366 USA
Chapter 1
New York City, July, 1926
On the day he died, Eamon Cobb surprised his staff and left work early. It was a humid, muggy summer in New York. The air hung still and heavy in the streets and tempers were short. Cobb looked out over Manhattan from his office on the 50th floor of the Cobb Tower and could see the whole city seething. He suddenly felt very tired. Cobb Industries was doing better than ever. But Cobb could feel himself growing old. He’d planned to work late tonight, then stay at his apartment in town. But suddenly he wanted nothing more than to get out of the city, to his estate on the Long Island Gold Coast where a refreshing breeze would blow off the water.
The union men would be downstairs, of course. They’d been raising hell on the sidewalk outside his building for a month now over some accidents at his mines in West Virginia. As if he knew the first thing about mine safety. He had foremen for that. That’s what the rabble refused to understand. Cobb was an idea man. His mining subsidiary was a financial machine, inputs and outputs on paper. Nothing more. The yokels were barking up the wrong tree.
And of course the police were useless. They’d move them along, but they never arrested anyone so the rabble just came back. Cobb was sick of it. If he left early, maybe he could avoid the worst of it.
MacGinty and Coyle were waiting in the outer office when he emerged. They were huge men, muscles straining at their suits. Both were former Pinkertons; expensive, but worth it. They fell in on either side of him as he walked to the elevator.
“I’m in no mood today,” he said. “Let’s see if we can’t slip out before they notice us.”
“Yes, sir,” said MacGinty. “The car’s out front.”
The express elevator deposited them in the lobby, and the two Pinkertons led the way outside. Cobb was dazzled by the sudden brightness, and the muggy air felt like walking into one of his steel plants.
“There he is!” someone shouted. “The butcher!”
The crowd of union men was bigger than he’d expected this time of day. In front of them, nearest to him, was an emaciated, one-legged man on crutches. He wore ragged coveralls with the empty leg pinned up and he gawped at Cobb like he was the King of the Faeries.
“Look what you did to a working man!” someone shouted. There were more shouts, overlapping into a chaos of noise.
Then a stone flew out of the crowd. It grazed Cobb’s cheek, and he felt the sting. His hand flew to his cheek and came away wet with blood.
Coyle roared and waded into the crowd. Cobb saw the brass knuckles on his right hand glitter in the sun. Then it was chaos. Everyone was shouting and pushing. Somewhere, a police whistle shrieked. His Cadillac was a dark shape ahead of him. He headed down the steps toward it, but someone broke from the crowd and leapt onto the stairs. The man was red-faced and roaring with incoherent, animal rage. He grabbed at Cobb’s briefcase, and Cobb nearly fell as he tried to yank it free.
MacGinty appeared out of nowhere, swinging his blackjack. Cobb saw it snap the man’s head back. A mass of bloody spittle flew from his mouth and spattered Cobb’s suit. The man fell to the sidewalk, and then MacGinty hauled Cobb down the steps and threw him into the back of the Cadillac. Cobb landed on top of his briefcase on the back seat. The door slammed shut, and the car sped away.
Cobb looked out the back window as the police swarmed the scene. He saw truncheons swinging, and blood.
He collected himself. He was Eamon Cobb, a titan. This was no way to react. Cobb sat up, controlled his breathing, and smoothed out his rumpled suit jacket.
“The mob’s a bit testy today,” he said to his driver.
“Yes, sir.”
The Cadillac drove Cobb out onto Long Island, a world away from Manhattan. Maybe he should withdraw from the city entirely, he thought, and leave it to the ingrates. Let them starve in the streets without his companies to give them work. But of course he wouldn’t give up the business. Still, he might set up an office in his mansion and run it from there. He was so fed up with people’s expectations, their strange demands, their death threats. To hell with all of them.
Cobb’s staff weren’t expecting him, but they reacted quickly. A servant took his coat and tutted over the bloodstains. Then Cobb walked into his study and shut the door behind him. He opened the French doors that looked out over Long Island Sound and let the breeze in. He rolled up his shirt sleeves and opened his private bar. Inside was a self-contained electric refrigerator that kept ice frozen. It was the latest thing. Cobb imagined how astonished his mother would have been if she were here to see it. He dumped a few ice cubes into a heavy glass and poured in three fingers of scotch.
Then Cobb settled into his favorite leather wing chair, drank his scotch, and looked out at the trees along the shoreline.
When he felt the first flash of heat he took it for a hot breeze from outside and thought to close the French doors. But he couldn’t stand. He got partway up before his muscles quivered and trembled, and he fell back into the armchair.
He was so hot suddenly. His skin began to tingle, and his heart beat like a hammer. Was this a heart attack? A rush of fear overtook him, and he called out for his butler. But only a faint squeaking sound came from his throat.
Cobb felt shooting pains through his limbs. He watched in terror as dark tendrils crept down his arms, his blood vessels swelling and turning black. And then the agony crushed him. He tried to scream, but couldn’t. He could only watch in horror as his skin blackened and swelled. His wrist strained against his watch band until the skin split. The pain was like being burned alive. He reached for the cold glass and knocked it to the floor. The scotch spread into a thin pool on the hardwood.
He slid from the chair onto the floor, his eye a bare fraction of an inch from a fallen ice cube. He lay there immobile, drowning in agony, unable to move or call out. He heard the footsteps of his butler pass by outside and prayed for him to open the door. But the man was under orders to never disturb Cobb here while he enjoyed his afternoon scotch.
Eamon Cobb was the 17th richest man in the world. He owned railroads, mines, and steel mills. He had decided the fates of thousands. When he died, he died alone on the floor of his study and was grateful for the release of oblivion.
###
Jack and Doc took the Ohio State Limited into New York, where Thomas Edison’s driver was to pick them up. But as they stepped down onto the platform at Grand Central Station, there was no sign of him.
Jack McGraw was a handsome man of about 30 with a lean, muscled build and a shock of sandy blonde hair that he struggled to keep neatly combed. At his side, Dorothy “Doc” Starr was a striking brunette with fierce green eyes softened by a mischievous smile. The couple made heads turn as the passengers and porters flowed around them. They scanned the sea of people surging through the station.
“It’s not like we’d miss him in the crowd,” Doc observed dryly. Edison’s driver was an enormous Slav named Stefan. He was a perfectly capable chauffeur, but his real job was to be Edison’s bodyguard, and at that he was unmatched. They’d seen Stefan handle an attac
k on Edison once. His response had been quick, brutal, and very effective.
“Look at all these people,” said Jack. “I almost forgot what New York is like.”
“Did you miss it?” Doc asked. She took his hand in hers and gave it a quick squeeze.
“Not a bit,” said Jack, turning to smile at her. “I had all I needed. Ah! Here he comes!”
Stefan hurried toward them parting the flow of humanity like a steamship making full power upstream. “Captain McGraw!” he said as he reached them. “And Doctor Starr! How wonderful to see you again! It’s been too long. AEGIS hasn’t been the same without you.”
“I don’t know,” said Jack, “I hear they’re growing like mad.”
“It’s been quite a year,” Stefan agreed. He apologized for being late as they collected their luggage. It had been a busy day, he told them, with a lot of major AEGIS personnel arriving for high-level meetings with Edison.
“And he’s asked us to come back,” Doc said. “What’s going on?”
“It’s hard to say,” Stefan said as he loaded their bags into the back of a Model L Lincoln. “Maybe it’s nothing. Just a run of bad luck. But nothing good for sure.”
They got in, and Stefan pulled the Lincoln out into traffic. They drove through Manhattan, crossed the Hudson, and headed into New Jersey.
A year, Jack thought as they rode. Apparently it had been a big year for AEGIS, the organization Edison had created to combat the darkness he saw taking root in the aftermath of the Great War. Well, it had been a big year for him, too.
Jack glanced over at Doc, looking out at the passing scenery. Part of him still couldn’t believe they had a daughter. He had a daughter! One he never would have known if fate hadn’t twisted back on itself.
He didn’t blame Doc for that, not for any of it. He certainly didn’t blame her for turning him down in Paris in 1918. There was a war on at the time, and Jack was a fighter pilot. Marrying him was a bad bet. A few days of happiness together was all they could hope for, and back then it had seemed like enough. None of them really expected to survive the war, but somehow they’d done it. By then though, Doc had married Dirk Starr and they had a daughter, Ellen. Jack left them to their happy life and got on with his own.
When Dorothy Starr reentered his life, she was a widow working for AEGIS, and she wanted to recruit him to fly their new prototype airship, the Daedalus II. So Jack had gone with her and a band of their old companions from the war, and they’d managed to strike a few blows for good.
But then Doc had changed his life yet again. He had always believed Ellen was Dirk Starr’s daughter. Starr himself went to his grave believing it. But Doc revealed that she was actually Jack’s child, from that brief time in Paris. It was a lot to take in.
They’d spent the last year together, away from the constant action and danger of AEGIS, learning to be a family in their odd way. Jack had thought he and Doc might marry finally, but Doc had let him know she wasn’t ready. She’d rejected Jack for fear of losing him. But she’d lost her husband anyway. Dirk Starr had been poisoned on a mission for AEGIS and took months to die as Doc fought in vain to save him.
That loss was still too close to her, Jack knew. She’d told him the truth about Ellen. She’d let him into their lives, and they’d traveled the world together for the last year. But the solidity of a wedding ring was more than she could handle.
Jack could live with that. She was in his life, and so was his daughter Ellen, now being looked after by Doc’s aunts. It was more than he’d dreamed of. For the rest, he could wait.
“Where’ve you gotten to, Jack?”
He looked up in surprise. Doc gave him a teasing grin and pointed forward. “Can’t believe you’re missing this.”
The Lincoln drove down an approach road to an AEGIS airfield in the New Jersey countryside. A huge, sloping wall of steel and concrete rose ahead of them. The airship hangar. Jack felt his heart race a bit. He’d missed this.
The car pulled up in front of the gaping doors at the end of the hangar. Jack and Doc got out, and there she was. The Daedalus II. It was such a graceful design, Jack thought. The ship was a low, sleek lozenge almost two hundred and fifty feet long, with a gleaming skin of vulcanized canvas and aluminum fibers. Her cockpit was slung beneath the bow, and he could see the ducted propeller nacelles on either side and the rudders at the rear. He couldn’t wait to fly her again.
As they went inside, Jack noticed the forward canopy had been removed, leaving only the aluminum frame. He’d heard they were replacing the glass with a lighter, stronger kind that had new anti-glare and anti-fog coatings. Most of the internal skeleton was being replaced with a lighter foamed steel too. Some of that weight reduction would translate into improved flight characteristics, while some would be traded back for new gear loadouts.
AEGIS was endlessly updating the ship. After every mission there seemed to be a new advance to be installed. Jack knew there was talk of just decommissioning her and starting over from the keel up. But not yet. Not yet.
“Well, if it ain’t Captain Stratosphere!” someone shouted. Jack winced at the nickname he’d picked up during the war. He was convinced it was meant to tease him, no matter how much his friends insisted otherwise.
Carl “Rivets” Holloway, the ship’s mechanic, walked out of a storage shed at the side of the hangar, hefting an armload of what looked like heavy steel beams. Rivets had a stocky, grizzled look, capped off by salt and pepper hair and an unruly, bristly mustache. He wore coveralls and an oil-stained cap. It was the same outfit he’d been wearing the last time Jack saw him.
“Good to see you, Doc!” Rivets called out happily. “Check me out, Jack. The Amazing Rivets. World’s Strongest Man!”
“Always thought a shaved head and a bearskin would suit you, Rivets,” Jack said.
“Nah, these are that new foam steel,” Rivets explained. “Stuff’s light as a feather.”
“Uh, yeah, I figured that,” Jack said. “It’s good to see you, Rivets. Are Duke and Deadeye around?”
“Nah, big AEGIS confab up at Edison’s house. All the bigwigs are talking strategy.”
“You didn’t go?”
“Nah,” Rivets answered once again. “I’d just open my mouth. And then before you know it there’s a fistfight. Besides, someone had to stay here and put your ship back together. You know, these are pretty light, but if I stand here holding them long enough…”
“Right, sorry.” Jack took several of the beams and followed Rivets up a wooden access ramp that led through a section of the ship’s frame where the outer skin had been removed. Scaffolding was set up on the ship’s skeleton, piled with tools and structural beams.
“Mostly done,” said Rivets. “Have her back in the air in a day or two. Put them up here, okay Jack?”
“How’s she doing?” Jack asked as he helped stack the beams.
“Well, the new frame of course, and you saw the canopy’s off. New electrics, new gimbals for the engine mounts. Hell, new stove in the galley. You name it, somebody’s got a better one to swap in.”
“But does she fly any better?”
“She will now that you’re here,” said Rivets. “Nothing against Duke. Fine pilot. But you and this ship were made for each other.”
Duke was Edward Willis, a British soldier and sometime intelligence agent. They’d become friends during the war, and when Jack joined AEGIS, Duke was already there. Along with Charlie “Deadeye” Dalton, another old friend Jack had recruited for his courage and his sharpshooting skills, they formed the Daedalus II’s first crew. Duke had taken over in his absence. Jack hoped there wouldn’t be any awkwardness about him coming back now.
They heard the telephone in the hangar’s comms shack ring. A minute later, Doc shouted, “Jack!”
They hurried back down the ramp to the hangar floor.
“What’s the matter, Doc?” asked Rivets.
“That was Mr. Edison,” she said. “One of his friends has died. Murdered apparentl
y. He wants us to come right away.”
“What about me?” Rivets asked.
“I asked him. He said he wants the ship ready to fly as soon as possible.”
Rivets looked relieved. “Best place for me,” he said. “She’ll be here when you need her.”
It was dark by the time the Lincoln pulled into Glenmont Manor. The house was brightly lit and cars lined the driveway. Men patrolled the grounds with tommy guns.
Two familiar figures met them as they approached the front steps. Duke and Deadeye looked like they’d taken good care of themselves in the last year. Duke still had his pencil-thin moustache, and his jacket and tie strongly suggested a military uniform even though he hadn’t been in the military since the war ended. His ever-present officer’s cap was perched at a rakish angle atop his dark hair. Doc used to say that Duke dressed the way he did solely to justify wearing that cap, which she claimed was the source of his matinee-idol good looks. Without the cap to pull his look together, she joked, he’d actually be kind of plain. Duke tolerated teasing from Doc, but from no one else.
Charlie Dalton, on the other hand, was wearing a crisply pressed suit. He even looked at ease in it, though Jack knew perfectly well that he hated it. Deadeye was of Cherokee ancestry, lean and wiry, with dark hair and faintly olive skin. When the two of them had been in Italy a few years ago, fighting fascist militia groups, Deadeye had been able to pass for Italian. At least as long as he kept his mouth shut. Jack knew his calm exterior was a mask. Deadeye would be restlessly scanning the surroundings, looking for threats. If something happened, he was usually the first one to spot it and react.
Together, they made a heck of a crew. He’d enjoyed his time away from the hustle of AEGIS operations, getting to know his new family. But he’d missed these men too, good friends and trusted companions. They traded hugs and handshakes all around.
“Glad to see you both back,” said Deadeye. “We can use you.”
