Brotherhood of the Strange (Kingship, Tales from the Aether Book 1) (3 page)

Four months later…

Captain Vance Williams looked out of a port side window of the Kingship, idly smoking his unadorned, but well used meerschaum pipe. He tried, as he often did, to blow a smoke ring. He was never sure if his repeated failure was due to the fact that he never really got the hang of it in the first place, or that since he no longer smoked tobacco. Instead, a much more palatable mixture of burning spices, most notably that of cinnamon, did not make a smoke which was conducive to blowing rings. The ship’s cook, Afa had been the one to convince him to stop smoking tobacco leaf. The large, quiet man always saw to Vance’s best interests. When he had protested asking what he should smoke instead, he was given a pouch of various spices Afa had collected in their travels around the globe. Cinnamon from China, vanilla from Madagascar, ginger from India, mixed with a hint of black pepper, the blend stimulated the mind while quieting the soul. Even though Vance had never been one to smoke to the state of addiction, the change had taken time. Now he found no pleasure in the smell of tobacco smoke, be it from a pipe, cigar, or the ghastly American cigarette, and wondered how he had ever enjoyed the vice in the first place. No longer being exposed to it on a daily basis, as he had been while captaining a warship in Her Majesty’s Royal Air Navy, was certainly a factor as nearly everyone smoked on those aetherships.

Some small fair weather clouds drifted by as he mused. The sky was that of bright royal blue which carried the smell of summer on this beautiful June day. At least it was sunny at this altitude; the ground some four thousand feet below was shrouded in a white blanket, whether or not it was raining below Vance did not know, though he guessed it probably was. From the rate the clouds had moved past his window he could tell they were making good time. Leaning forward, he rested his arms on a rail that had once held a plasmatic cannon, a section of the long unused gun port. When he had undertaken the sizable goal of restoring his grandfather’s ship and making it sky-worthy again he had found a chaotic assortment of parts that needed to be fixed or replaced. The energy cannons however, had been nowhere to be found, nor had Vance found any record of them being sold from his grandfather’s notes and ledgers left on board. Most likely they had been retained by the commanding body when the ship had been mothballed some forty years ago. It didn’t really matter anyway, as Vance was a successful merchant now and seldom had need of the firepower this vessel once packed. In fact, for a ship of her relatively diminutive size, Vance would have considered the amount of weaponry overkill, were it not for the tales his grandfather once told him. His life was now one of near serenity and he seldom even carried his sidearm anymore, a habit which had been far more difficult to break than switching from tobacco to cinnamon.

Knowing the sounds of his ship as well as any good captain, Vance could hear the lift in the engine room above him begin its decent from the upper section of the vessel and through the connecting dorsal to come to a rest on his level. He knew, tobacco or cinnamon, he was about to get an earful.

“Saints preserve us!” came a petite, though stern voice as the door to the lift opened. “It’s bad enough ya smoke that bleedin’ thing in the first place! Do ya have to do it where you know I’ll be walkin?”

Knowing he was in trouble anyway, plus the fact his pipe was pretty well smoked out, Vance attempted to blow one last smoke ring, again a dismal failure, in the direction of the grease covered woman who now stood near him. “I’m sorry Wingnut, I had no idea you’d be passing this way,” he said a little too unconvincingly.

Molly, whom everyone simply called Wingnut, narrowed her eyes at him, “That’s a bald-faced lie and ya know it, sir.” She only called him ‘sir’ when she wanted to pick a fight, like a parent using a child’s full name to drive a point home. “And just where do ya think I’d be comin’ from? There’s only so many ways to get from the engine room to the rest o’ this blasted ship!”

Both of them stared at each other for a few seconds, Vance was the first to start smiling. Wingnut, unable to carry on the ruse of real anger, let out a laugh, though she did punch Vance in the arm, fairly hard, her Irish blood making up for her small stature.

“How are we set for coal?” Vance asked his engineer as he tapped out the remains of his pipe.

“We should be fine,” Wingnut answered. We’re going on half steam right now, which is more than enough given the nice weather we’re flying through.” It always amused Vance to see the change in the level of accent that accompanied Wingnut’s moods. The accent itself was clearly there to stay no matter how long she remained absent from the Emerald Isle, though the angrier she got, even in jest, the louder and more heavily accented her speech became. When she was truly angry, her speech could be nigh near incomprehensible. Given her propensity for swearing when angry, it was probably for the best. She continued, “The coal we gave those stranded folks really didn’t cut into our supply too much. I wouldn’t want to cross any oceans, but we should be fine till we get to Germany.” She added somewhat distantly, “I’m glad we helped them.”

“As am I,” Vance replied remembering the stranded ship they aided two days ago. It had been a moderately sized vessel, full of a few families looking for an uninhabited upland to carve a new life out of. They had run out of coal and had been adrift for two days, floating at about two thousand feet. Their burner had been consuming the ore very inefficiently, a problem Wingnut had been quick to identify. With a few spare parts she had quickly fixed the problem while teaching their mechanic in the process. When they had first seen the disabled ship, their crew were considering descending to the surface to find some coal or wood to burn and get their boilers going again. Vance had strenuously advised against that; the area they were flying over was fairly remote, and landing their families in an unarmed craft, could prove dangerous. After consulting with his crew, as the value of the coal was partially theirs, Vance had presented them with enough to get to a nearby city, where they could find work to refuel, resupply, and hopefully be on their way. They had offered payment of course, but Vance had dismissed that notion, seeing their near indigent circumstances.

Without further conversation, she returned to the lift and continued on to the deck below. Apparently she had only stopped the lift to berate his smoking near ‘her’ area of the ship. Vance watched her go, her small frame almost swimming in the overlarge jumpsuit that was the de facto working outfit, which seemed to be all the time. The jumpsuit was old, and showed signs of repair and mending through the ever present grease stains. A dozen pockets held all sorts of tools, the purpose of some Vance could only guess. It was this same jumpsuit she had been wearing the day they had met, and although he knew she wore it only to remember the past, to him it had always seemed a mute accusation, a reminder of a singular action he had spent the past seven years quietly trying to make up for. However, he had to admit as her head disappeared below the deck, that Wingnut, Molly, had come a long way. Though she would always bear more than her share of grief, she had again found joy in life. She often now sang as she worked, though she would never admit it. The bar fights she got into now seemed sometimes more for the fun of it rather than a bellicose need to lash out at the world and punish some unsuspecting bar fly for her hard life. Also, as dirty and greasy as she was when she was working on Kingship’s engines, her raven hair was always done up in a manner more becoming a princess in an evening gown attending a ball, than an engineer working on a fifty-year old aethership wearing her deceased husband’s jumpsuit.

Vance was pulled from any further musings by the ring of an alarm bell. Two short blasts meant no emergency, just a request for the captain to report to the bridge. If it had been really important he would have been addressed via a ship wide announcement. Pocketing his still warm pipe, he made his way towards the front of the vessel, walking down the red carpeted main corridor, past the lavish crew quarters that once served as state rooms for visiting dignitaries. Reaching the beautifully decorated iron wrought staircase, Vance descended from the main deck down to the crew deck, the lowest of the triple decked ship, and made his way to the bow where he found Winston and Afa in heated, but friendly discussion.

“I’m tellin’ ya lad,” Winston was saying is his thick Scottish brogue, “that cursed thing’s squakin’ more and more these days. Best thing to do would be ta tear it out and toss it overboard.”

“That equipment is a part of this ship,” replied Afa, his soft voice belying his enormous stature. “To remove it would equate removing a piece of its history, and soul.”

Winston’s reply was immediate, “Don’t be lecturin’ me lad! I know the ‘soul’ of this old girl better than any of you wee ones, and I’ll say it again, it’s only some kind of fangled telegraph, none of us ever could get it to work quite right none too often. And the few times it did? Well, believe me, bad things always followed.”

Vance smiled as he watched the exchange between his aged but spry pilot, Winston, and Afa, a man whose sheer size, exotic Polynesian heritage, and intimidating manner had quickly earned him the title of ‘The Negotiator’. The two took, it seemed, a childlike delight in arguing with one another, though Afa never really argued. He would always calmly make his points and counterpoints allowing Winston’s blustering to grow louder and more nonsensical. In truth, they both respected the other and found boisterous discussion a great way to pass the leagues upon leagues of open air the Kingship traveled. Their argument was one that had been recurring off and on for the past several months.

The problem had begun with a few muffled sounds of a screeching static, a sound similar to interference from wireless Morse. At first the crew had ignored it, as it had only happened a handful of times and even then it had not been overly loud. No one could quite figure out the source of it, the faint vibrations making their way through the various talk tubes and passageways. As old as she was, the Kingship was prone to more than her share of strange sounds, and it had eventually been chalked up to yet another personality quirk of the vessel they called home. After a few weeks it had grown less frequent, and finally ceased altogether. One evening some two weeks later, the crew was gathered in one corner of the large common room by the kitchen where Afa had just cooked up one of his many famous recipes. As they began to tuck in, the sound again was heard, this time with a magnitude that rattled windows and forced protective fingers into ears. The sound was clearly emanating from the bridge and all five crew members went to investigate only to be met with silence, the controls secured as Winston had set them when he left for dinner. They had looked around for several minutes and were about to give up when the sound happened again, the shrill static-filled screeching had been loud enough to dull the senses. This sound was unique not only in sheer volume, but that another sound seemed to be carried along as well, a faint whisper that dripped with a deep malignancy. Vance would have regulated the whisper and accompanying feeling of dread to his imagination or his mind attempting to apply logic to the unfamiliar, however the looks on the other four crew confirmed he had not been alone.

It had been clear the sound had come from behind a panel in the radio room, a small windowless office to the rear of the bridge. Wingnut had removed the panel to revel a contraption that resembled some form of radio, though far more advanced and alien than anything Vance had seen in his career. Winston spat a curse at its discovery, muttering that he had thought that blasted relic would have been removed, stating he never knew exactly how the thing worked, nor did he care to. Stating no good could come from a cursed wireless, he would elaborate no further, nor go anywhere near it. Vance knew if Winston was being tightlipped, it was probably best not to ask.

“What seems to be the problem gentlemen?” Vance asked the two, emerging from the door into the control and valve laden room.

“The problem? Lad, that bucket o’ banshee cursed parts is caterwauling up and down my bridge again! Like I been sayin’ for two months, we should get rid o’ that thing!”

“I didn’t hear anything,” Vance admitted. “Though I was near the aft of the ship.”

“It wasn’t nearly as loud as before, Fekitoa,” Afa replied, using the nickname he had bestowed upon Vance.

“What in William Wallace's name brought you up to the bridge anyway Afa?” Winston continued. “Look at you tracking dirt and mud onto me spit polished control room! Get back to yer garden and leave the flyin’ to the experts.”

As loud and boisterous as he was being, Winston’s assessment of Afa was not too far off. His shoes were covered in topsoil and he still clutched a muddy spade in one hand. While it was not exactly odd to find Afa on the bridge, he could most often be found in the launch bay turned greenhouse tending to his garden, on deck watching the horizon, or in the Kingship’s galley preparing the fruits of his labor into delicious, though often spicy, meals for the crew. Winston, on the other hand, practically lived here among the valves, dials, switches and enormous windows that made up the bridge of the Kingship.

Vance entered the radio room with Afa, whose size made the small room feel even smaller. He adjusted the knobs and dials, not knowing any more now than what they did before. As usual, no matter what he or any of his crew did, the device was unresponsive. Superficially, it resembled a wireless radiograph, similar to the mundane one Vance had installed when he took the ship out of storage eight years ago. As this model looked to be an original part of the fifty year old ship, it provided a casual mystery Vance was enjoying, as he did not believe the technology had been around that long. Wingnut had all but taken the device apart herself. She probably would have, but even she, with her uncanny technical expertise, was befuddled by its function and couldn't identify more than half of the components. In her opinion, judging by the way the contraption was wired, it probably shouldn’t do anything.