Skykeep
Authors: Joseph R. Lallo
Tags: #scifi, #adventure, #action, #prison, #steampunk, #airships
By Joseph R. Lallo
Copyright © 2015 Joseph R. Lallo
Cover By Nick Deligaris
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Prologue
Amanita Graus stirred slightly in her hammock,
swaddled in plush blankets and rocking gently with the motion of
her surroundings. One wouldn’t think the drafty loading bay of an
airship called the
Wind Breaker
would make for a comfortable
bedroom. Nita certainly didn’t think so, at least when she’d first
become a part of the crew. It was small, its walls unpainted wood
festooned with various brass pipes and fittings that ran throughout
the ship. In the center of the floor was a large hole through which
a small boat was held in place with chains leading down from a
pulley in the ceiling. What light there was came from the
scattering of portholes on the port and starboard walls, and most
spare stretches of floor were piled with boxes and crates stuffed
with all sorts of goods.
In the four months since her first journey,
though, the creaking of the wooden walls and the distant hiss and
hum of the steam engine had become a lullaby. The cold took longer
to adjust to, but a down quilt from her bed at home took care of
that. Its astoundingly intricate pattern made the quilt less a
blanket and more a work of art, practically a tapestry fit for the
walls of a museum. Not for a Calderan, though. Nita’s people felt
that beauty and elegance should be found in everything, be it a
sculpture in the garden of a palace or a comforter in a forgotten
closet. And an elaborate design of rich reds and golden yellows
didn’t hurt its ability to keep her as warm as toast and sleeping
like a baby.
The first hint of the rising sun cast its
rays through the port side portholes of her makeshift bedroom.
Though the light was dim, it was enough to wake her. Somehow Nita
had trained herself to awaken at the crack of dawn. It was one of
the few times the ship was relatively quiet and free of activity,
which meant it was a fine time to see to some personal tasks.
Nita yawned and reluctantly threw her blanket
aside, revealing a somewhat droopy pair of fleece pajamas that had
been purchased as a welcome gift for her from the crew after her
first official trip among them. It was clear from its poor fit and
lackluster styling that it was a product of Rim, the continent that
was home to the more industrial portion of society. Like all such
products, it served its purpose well enough, even if it lacked the
artistry of a Calderan piece. She tugged at one of the sleeves and
made a mental note to pick up a needle and some embroidery thread
during her next trip home to give it a personal touch.
She rubbed some sleep from her eyes and
reached blindly for the hook beside her bed, finding her slippers
there and pulling them on to perform the complex dance of her
morning routine. First was the tricky dismount from the hammock,
something that had taken more than two weeks to master. Next was
the choreographed sequence of steps, leans, and shuffles it took to
navigate around the brass workings of the winch mechanism, the
piles of crates, and the copious strapping used to secure it all.
Finally she found her way to a hinged wooden shelf folded against
the port side wall in one corner of the bay. Beside it was a
kettle, a teacup, a small bag, and a cask of water all hanging from
their own hooks. Above it was a stout brass steam pipe with some
simple metal clamps and platforms affixed to it.
Nita shifted a crate in front of her cozy
little corner, took a seat, and unfastened the leather strap to
lower her shelf. It was a desk of sorts. Thinner straps held down
assorted stationary, most notably two small leather-bound books
with silk ribbons marking their pages. On the wall previously
hidden behind the shelf were pinned three magnificent watercolor
paintings. The first proudly displayed her mother and father, the
second her gorgeous twin sister, Analita, and the third her
handsome younger brother, Joshua.
After filling the kettle with water and
clamping it in place atop the steam pipe, she turned a valve on a
transparent tube on the forward wall just above her, conjuring the
distinctive green light of what the members of the crew called a
“phlo-light.” She slid a fountain pen from its leather sleeve in
the wall and loaded it with ink. By the time she’d loaded it
properly and found a blank page, the kettle was bubbling merrily
for a badly needed cup of tea. She found a pouch of her favorite
blend, clamped a pinch of it into a wire cage, and prepared a nice
cup. The soothing warmth and heavenly aroma finally perked up her
brain sufficiently to get to the matter at hand.
Dear Mother, she scrawled in precise and
curving letters. It has been three weeks since my last visit.
Captain Mack has been attempting to teach me to “smell the wind” as
we travel, which is what he claims allows him to navigate so well.
I honestly don’t know how he smells anything over those sickly
sweet cigars he smokes, but the whole of the crew seems always to
know just how far we’ve traveled without so much as a glance out
the window, so there must be some knack to navigation. I’m doing my
best to work it out.
A louder and longer than normal creak
prompted Nita to snatch up her teacup, hold her pen in her teeth,
and hold down her book. The ship tipped and swung, causing some of
the smaller crates to shuffle across the floor and spilling some
water from her kettle to hiss against the pipe. A moment or two
later, the swing reversed itself, and after another minor one
things settled.
For instance, we’ve just made a hard turn to
starboard. I believe that means we are nearing the trading post. We
should be there in about five hours or so. I’m looking forward to
it. Lil says the people along the southern border of Rim make music
boxes, just like father used to. This post is very near to the
southern edge of Rim, so I’m willing to bet they’ll have some. I’m
curious to see how they compare. I’ll be sure to bring you one.
I’ve just finished reading your second to
last letter. Please give Joshua my congratulations on having his
sculpture displayed in the mayor’s office. I can just imagine how
proud he is. And if things work out properly, I hope to be home
long enough to see Lita’s performance in the ballet. It is so
wonderful that the opening night falls during one of my visits! You
wouldn’t have anything to do with that, would you?
As you know, I’ve been doing my best to teach
the crew how to care for their own ship. After spending their lives
afraid to so much as tighten a bolt for fear of angering the fug
folk and being banned from further repair, it is difficult to
convince them to try their own maintenance. Coop has no interest at
all in it, but he follows directions fairly well and is a decent
assistant. Lil, bless her, tries her best, but she’s a bit
hopeless. She doesn’t quite understand how important it is to do
things in the right order. Yesterday she tried taking a pipe cap
off without shutting off pressure and bleeding the system. You
should have seen how far that cap flew! Gunner, on the other hand,
is a natural. It stands to reason since, as he’s so eager to point
out, he is the only one with a college education. The problem is,
his education is in destroying things. That’s not the sort of
person I’m comfortable having maintain a boiler.
Nita stopped writing and tilted her head, a
sound just barely at the edge of her hearing catching her
attention. It didn’t take long to identify it, and she was already
hastily stowing her things when a gruff voice echoed out of a tube
on the wall.
“Wailers! All hands on deck!” the captain
ordered.
Without warning, the ship started to pitch
violently to one side, sending crates sliding free of their
restraints and across the floor. Nita scrambled to her feet and
bolted for the door. She braced herself against the wall and
navigated the narrow hallway to the ladder to the next deck,
meeting Lil at the top. The petite little firebrand was already
dressed, or more likely
still
dressed, as she tended to
sleep in her work clothes. Times like this made it clear why she
did so.
“They better not make a habit of attacking
before breakfast,” Lil said, wide awake but with the disheveled
hair of someone who had been in bed moments earlier. “I can be
right ornery when I haven’t had a good plate of hash yet.” A snore
behind her prompted her to duck back into her tiny room and deliver
a motivating kick to her older brother, who was still nestled in
his hammock. “Dang it, Coop, you’re not sleeping through another
attack!”
Nita sprinted through another few decks until
she finally scrambled onto the main deck. The ship was moving at
quite a clip, the chilly wind billowing Nita’s pajamas and sending
a brisk breeze through some very unwelcome areas. There wasn’t much
to see, as the ship was just emerging from a cloud bank and most of
the view of the sea far below was blotted out in a field of cottony
white plumes. Gunner, who had been on night watch, was already
manning the spike gun mounted to the port railing. With a
stuttering bark, it sent a string of finger-sized nails—called
“fléchettes”—whistling through the air at a distant two-man airship
screaming toward them out of the clouds.
“Gunner, I swear, you keep wasting ammunition
on them things when they’re so far off and it’ll be Lil on mounted
guns instead of you,” growled the captain as he spun the wheel hard
to put the attacker in better position for return fire.
“I’m ready for it, Cap’n,” Lil said, popping
out onto the deck with a rifle in hand.
Coop clumsily crawled up after her. “How many
we lookin’ at, Cap’n?”
“I’ve got one on port,” Gunner said, firing
another string of nails with a grin. “But not for much longer.”
“Sounds like one more,” Nita called. “I can’t
tell if it is above us or below us.”
There was the distinctive thump of darts
biting into the thick fabric of the envelope, then a metallic
screech and a hard jolt as the ship twisted under an unbalanced
engine load.
“That’ll be above us then,” the captain said.
“Nita!”
“I’m on it!” Nita said.
“I’ll go with her. If that’s where the wailer
is, she’ll need cover,” Lil said.
Nita pulled open a large wooden case tucked
beneath the railing of the deck and snagged a pack that was within.
In one smooth motion she swung it across her back and grasped the
nearest rigging, hauling herself quickly up. Lil slung her rifle
behind her and darted up another section of rigging. As much
practice as she’d had in the last few months climbing up and down
the ropes that held and stabilized the massive gas envelope that
kept the ship aloft, Nita could never seem to match the nimbleness
of the sprightly young deckhand. The girl must have been part
squirrel and part lunatic.
“Hold tight, hard turn to port!” bellowed the
captain.
The lines in Nita’s hands groaned under the
stress of the sudden turn, and the deck dangling below suddenly
swung out from beneath her. She held tight and tried not to look at
the waves a few hundred yards below her, which of course had chosen
that moment to peek at her through the thinning clouds. Nita wasn’t
precisely afraid of heights anymore. That much had been trained out
of her fairly quickly as a result of spending so much time among
the clouds. She did sometimes suffer from an acute
awareness
of heights, however. Fortunately when there was a job to be done,
it typically managed to be the first thing on her mind. That was
because being the engineer on an airship meant a job that needed to
be done would usually send them plummeting into the sea if she
didn’t get to it quickly. When the ship swung back and stabilized
in its new course, Nita continued up. The stretch of rigging they’d
selected brought her to the envelope about midway between the
turbines and the envelope’s rear fins, which made for a very windy
climb whenever she was directly behind one of the turbines.
Nevertheless, she preferred it to being in front of them, since the
thought of getting blown away from the spinning blades was
marginally more pleasant than the thought of being pulled toward
them.
