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Category:
Mystery/Suspense
Publisher: Smashwords
ISBN-10: 1311255117
Type: Fiction
Pages: 90
Copyright: 9-20-2014
ISBN-13: 9781311255112
Price: $0.99 (eBook)
Lt. Aubrianna Chellbamber of the Foglandian Royal Air Corps returns to unravel another perplexing conundrum.
When Sir Waldraff Fammory Bleen – the famous aeronaut, industrialist and all-around asshole – is killed by a Vindanian flying death dagger, Bombalay police inspector Hanop Rasavan asks Lt. Aubrianna Chellbamber to help him solve the case ... much to the annoyance of Capt. Lank Vadis, who suspects the handsome Rasavan is more interested in Aubrianna than the investigation.
Excerpt
Taina’s eyes bulged in horror as she beheld the giant bumblebee looming over her. She cried out in alarm, but Gellen assumed her outburst was inspired by ecstasy, not fear, so he kept going, plunging even faster into the orifice between her shapely, twitching legs. He did not sense the presence of the interloper; surely they were safe from prying eyes, lying on the lawn in the middle of the master’s hedge maze with only the moon to bear witness – and She would not be shocked by the carnal acts She herself inspired.
“God gods, Gellen, there’s a monstrous bee over us!” Taina shrieked, thrusting an arm at the sky. “Look at it! Look!”
His lust-crazed brain still did not comprehend – until a shadow suddenly draped itself over them. Then, at last, he paused and looked over his shoulder.
“My gods!”
He pulled out of Taina and spun around, gaping at the monster hovering a hundred feet above them. But his fearful scream quickly turned into a laugh as he realized the truth: The bee was actually a big wicker basket, about eight feet long, sporting bold yellow stripes, with a spinning propeller sticking out of its butt and big, fan-shaped wings protruding from its sides – wings that, oddly enough, were not fluttering like a bee’s wings should, or flapping like a bird’s, but strangely stationary. And stranger still, there was no gas bag above the “bee,” yet it hung in the night sky, suspended by some force he could not fathom.
“Silly girl,” he said, “it’s just an airship of some kind. See? There’s people sitting inside.”
“People!” she cried. “Oh lord!” She grabbed the maid’s uniform lying beside her in the grass and draped it over her naked body, her face blushing in mortification...
And inside the big wicker basket, the passengers regarded the scene below with great amusement, chortling at the servants scrambling desperately to clothe themselves.
“I think those two need to cool off just a tad,” said Sir Waldraff Fammory Bleen, the pilot, as he reached into the breast pocket of his leather flight jacket and took out a silver flask. He uncapped it, held it over the side of the cockpit and turned it upside down, yelling “Cheers!” as the liquor rushed toward the target below.
Kersplash!
The whiskey missed the man but got the maid square in the face, eliciting a gasp and a yelp, and the young man responded by shouting foul oaths and shaking a fist at the “bee” – while his other hand tugged at his boxers, trying to pull them over his turgid prong.
Guffawing with glee, Sir Waldraff shoved the throttle forward and the airship buzzed off into the starry night. But one of his passengers was not amused.
“Now why did you have to go and do that?” Languid Bleen said. “What a waste of perfectly good whiskey!”
“Fear not, my dear,” Sir Waldraff said as he pocketed the flask. “There’s plenty more where that came from. I wouldn’t dream of leaving you high and dry.”
He pushed the joystick forward, sending the airship into a shallow dive, his passengers cringing as the moon-bathed scenery rushed by – the wide cobblestone streets and huge, manicured lawns and sumptuous gardens and delightful hedge mazes and turreted rooftops of Poshba Hill, Bombalay’s most exclusive neighborhood. The airship flew over the wrought iron fence of the Bleen estate, passed the lumbering steam elephants and the high brick wall surrounding the back yard, then banked toward the landing zone, marked by a ring of glowstone lamps mounted on bamboo posts in the center of the garden.
Sir Waldraff adjusted the throttle and the whirr of the spring-powered motors subsided, the tail rotor slowing, the airship losing speed till it hovered directly over the landing zone. He pulled another lever and the wings folded in halfway, like the sections of a fan, and the airship began to descend. As it neared the ground it was caught by a gust of wind and drifted to the left, knocking over one of the bamboo poles before landing atop a rose bush.
Crunch.
Sir Waldraff killed the motors. The tail rotor spun to a stop. The wings folded up completely, swinging down and in, flattening along the airship’s sides. Sir Waldraff climbed out of the cockpit, hopped to the ground and stood there with hands on hips, watching with great amusement as his passengers disembarked. His secretary, Gaston Pertwee, came out first, then reached out to assist Languid, who tripped over a branch and nearly lost her balance, until Gaston caught her in the nick of time.
Not the first time she’s fallen into his arms, Sir Waldraff mused. But it damn well might be the last.
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