Kindle Edition
Amazon
Category:
Science Fiction
Publisher: KDP
ISBN-10: 1310413649
Type: Fiction
Pages: 82
Copyright: June 16, 2014
ISBN-13: 9781310413643
Price: $0.99 (eBook)
Steamy steampunk novella
When the cruel captain of the airship Petty Snark gets strangled by his own cat-o-nine-tails, the crew wants to dismiss it as an unfortunate accident. But Lt. Aubrianna Chellbamber, Special Investigator of Perplexing Incidents for the Royal Foglandian Air Corps, suspects foul play. As she investigates the kinky crew and tries to untangle this sordid mess, we have to wonder: Will the killer lash out again, or will Aubrianna whip up a solution to this steamy – and steampunky – mystery?
Excerpt
The airship Petty Snark soared above the slums and spires of the great city of Bombalay, heading out to sea. The four steam engines snorted and growled, the exhaust pipes belched and sputtered, the props rattled and hummed, the aluminum framework groaned and creaked, and the silvery fabric rustled and snapped -- music to the ears of Captain Dermid Quigg, who sat in his big chair, gripping the armrests with his meaty hands, a grin broaching his broad, craggy face.
The collision avoidance gong sounded and helmswoman Tosta Cremager glanced up from the dime novel she was reading -- “Seduced By Sasquatch.” A behemothian passenger liner was crossing their bow, and she recognized it instantly as the Lindberger, one of the oldest and largest dirigibles in the world, filled with highly volatile helium and equipped with eight double-boiler engines capable of producing twelve hundred chugs per minute. Tosta knew the Lindberger was as long as ten football fields, but she’d never seen a football field so she had no idea what that meant, except the Lindberger was very large and it would be unwise to collide with it. And so, calculating speed and distance with the agility of a Tabbage machine, she quickly deduced that the Lindberger’s stern would clear the Petty Snark’s nose by about one yard. Give or take a few inches.
“Eh, good enough,” she muttered, but gave the wheel a slight twitch to the right, just to be on the safe side, then buried her nose back in her book.
“You blasted idiot!” Captain Quigg roared as the Lindberger’s backwash buffeted the hull. “What are you trying to do, get us all killed?”
Tosta glanced up. “No, sir.”
“Well I’d hate to see how you’d do if you were trying! Put down that blasted book and pay attention to your duties, or so help me I’ll skin you alive!”
“Yes sir,” Tosta said with a sigh, setting the book face-down on the binnacle and gazing glumly out the windscreen.
When the turbulence cleared and the Petty Snark stopped shaking uncontrollably like a wet dog in a snow storm, the captain turned to his navigator and said, “Cribbins, plot a course for Damnasia.”
Every crewman’s head turned in unison toward the captain, as Chezzer Cribbins nervously replied: “Sir, did you just say Damnasia?”
“No, boy, I said ‘amnesia.’ I’ve contracted amnesia. Who are you, anyway?”
“I’m Cribbins, sir. The nav...”
“I was being sarcastic, you idiot! I don’t have amnesia. Although I sometimes wish I could forget this accursed ship and this damned crew! I said Damnasia and I meant Damnasia!”
“Captain, have you forgotten that Damnasia is on the Faustralian continent?”
The captain’s eyes widened in amazement. “I’ll be damned! I thought it was hiding inside your bloomin’ arse.”
The rest of the crew tittered. Chezzer’s cheeks reddened. The captain continued: “I know damn well where Damnasia is. And I’m delighted you do, too, considering you’re the flippin’ navigator. Now plot that course.”
“Sir, aren’t you forgetting there’s a no-fly zone over Faustralia? Any foreign craft intruding in that air space will be shot down on sight by their small but feisty battle blimps.”
The captain regarded the lad with steely gray eyes (one of his eyes actually was steel, being a replacement for his real eye, which had been lost in a fight some years before). He climbed from his troll-leather chair and strolled across the deck to stand next to Cribbins, and in an affable voice he said, “The key words are ‘on sight,’ Cribbins. And if they don’t see us, they can’t shoot us down on sight, now can they?”
“Begging your pardon, sir, but how do we avoid being seen? They’ve got watchtowers all over the coast, equipped with detector beams, and their air patrol pilots have night goggles, so even if we arrive after sunset they’re bound to spot us.”
“Not if we steer well clear of all those watchtowers and patrols.”
“How do we do that, sir? We don’t know exactly where they are. That’s classified information.”
The captain reached into the front of his coat and took out a folded piece of parchment.
“This is a chart of the Faustralian coast, pinpointing every watchtower and all their blind spots, and this inset here shows the routes taken by the patrols -- and their schedule. This chart cost me a pretty penny, and if you follow it exactly we can sneak in right under the Fausties’ noses.”
He set the chart on the plotting table. The navigator bent down, studying it. “And what’s this red X for, sir?”
“The landing zone, stupid, what did you think it was? Smack dab in the middle of the Damnasian Forlornlands it is, and we’ll fly through Ginormous Gulch to get there, so no low-beam sweeps can spot us. If the unloading goes without a hitch -- and it better -- we’ll be back in international airspace within two hours, with the Fausties none the wiser.”
Chezzer straightened up. “I apologize, sir.”
Quigg patted the young man on the shoulder. “Apology accepted. Now, if it isn’t too much trouble, would you mind plotting a course for Damnasia?”
“Certainly, sir.”
“Oh, there’s one more thing, Cribbins.”
“Yes sir?”
Quigg moved his massive hand from the lad’s shoulder to his throat. His fingers dug deep. Chezzer gagged and tried to pull away, but was helpless in the vice-like grip. His hands seized the captain’s arm and tugged frantically, but it was like trying to bend a steel pipe.
Maintaining his affable tone, the captain said, “If you ever question one of my orders again, I’ll rip your bloody head clear off your scrawny neck.”
He gave the throat one last squeeze and released it. Cribbins lurched against the plotting table and sank to the floor, gagging and wheezing. As Quigg strolled back to his captain’s chair, First Officer Notty Besott rose from hers and rushed to the lad’s aide, pulling a brass flask from the hip pocket of her coat and holding it up to Chezzer’s quivering lips.
“Have a slug,” she said. “It’ll help.”
Chezzer took the flask in trembling hands and tipped it up, sputtering as the greenish-brown liquid -- a mixture of absinthe, rum, witchwater and distilled elf pee -- burned down his throat. For a moment, panic filled his face, then relief.
“Better?” she said with a smile.
He smiled back. “Yes, ma’am. Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it.”
He started to hand back the flask, but Notty shook her head. “You keep that for awhile.”
“Thanks, ma’am.”
She straightened up and swung around to face the captain.
“My, my, what a touching scene,” Quigg sneered. “Maybe you’d like to wipe his ass now, eh? You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Cribbins?”
Scowling, the navigator tried to rise, then thought better of it and sank down again. But Notty was in no mood to hold her tongue.
“This time you’ve gone too far, captain,” she said.
Quigg folded his arms over his barrel chest. “Have I, now? And what do you aim to do about it?”
Notty turned to Lulique Daniss, the radio operator, who had pulled off her headphones and was watching the scene in rapt attention while shoving peanuts into her mouth from a jar sitting atop the wireless set.
“Open a porthole, Lulique,” Notty said. “It stinks in here.”
“Aye aye, ma’am,” Lulique said. She opened the porthole and watched, open mouthed, as Notty snatched the chart from the plotting table, crumpled it up and stomped toward her.
“What in blazes are you doing, woman?” the captain bellowed. “Stop! Stop, I say!”
He bounded out of his chair and rushed toward her, but Notty had once been the starting pitcher on the girls’ whiffleball team at Monchoster West Secondary School, and those skills had not deserted her. In one fluid motion she cocked her arm and hurled the wadded-up chart toward the porthole. It cleared Lulique’s shoulder by an inch, drifted three inches to the right as it was caught by the swirling breeze, and zoomed out the exact center of the porthole to begin a new journey amidst the clouds.
“You blithering morons!” the captain roared, his furious glare sweeping across the control room. “Why didn’t anyone try to stop her? Of all the incompetent, stupid, treacherous simpletons it’s ever been my misfortune to command, you all take the cakes and ale! Dammit, I don’t have time for this, but you leave me no choice. All engines stop!”
He turned toward Tosta, who once again had her nose buried in her dime novel, despite his direct orders.
“Helmsman!” he roared. “I said all engines stop!”
Tosta rolled her eyes. “Yes sir,” she said wearily, “right away sir.” She slapped down her book, grabbed the handle on the telegraph and yanked it upright. A few seconds later the engine room responded, the telegraph dinging as the red arrow on the dial swung around to “STOP.” The engines’ howl shifted to a growl ... a snarl ... a whimper, as the props unblurred and spun to a stop. The airship glided to a halt and hovered as Tosta turned to the buoyancy controls and twisted several valves, equalizing the pressure in the fore and aft liftanium cells.
Captain Quigg stomped back to his chair and jabbed the button on the speaking tube, bellowing into the mouthpiece: “Mangrud! Hupton! Get your asses down here! It’s whipping time!”
He grabbed the front of the right armrest and jerked it up, reached into the compartment beneath and took out a cat-o-nine-tails, then turned around slowly, his eyes spearing into one crewman after another as he tapped the whip gently against his palm, letting the nine thongs slip through his fingers like the locks of a lover’s tresses. His gaze finally fell on Notty and stayed there.
“You threw away my chart,” he said softly. “My Damnasia chart. I’ll have to buy another, if I can find the scoundrel who sold me the first one. You’ve caused me considerable inconvenience, Miss Besott.”
Notty stood there, arms akimbo, chin thrust out defiantly. “And what are you going to do about it, captain?”
Quigg walked toward her ... then abruptly spun to his left and thrust a finger at Lulique.
“Daniss!” he roared, making the radio operator jump.
She hopped to her feet, snapping to attention. “Yes sir?”
“You could’ve stopped this. Why in blazes didn’t you close that damn porthole?”
“There wasn’t time sir. It all happened so fast. I...”
“Assume the position.”
Notty took a step toward him. “Captain, I’m the one who...”
“Shut your yapper!” He turned back to Lulique. “I said assume the position!”
“Aye aye, captain.”
Lulique unbuttoned her coat and shrugged it off, then turned around, facing the bulkhead as she grabbed the sides of the radio table, bracing herself. The captain came up behind her, eyeing the creamy flesh of her back -- like an artist sizing up a blank canvas.
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