Terra Mechanica: A Steampunk Anthology (29 page)

Roy watched her nervously before speaking again. “I’m a citizen of the British Empire. My father is a diplomat, so we travel all the time. My family has been living in Sydney for almost four months. I hate it there—it’s hot, and I swear, every indigenous creature will kill you as soon as look at you. So, I decided to go back to England.”

“By sneaking aboard my airship and stealing my food supplies?”

Roy paused before nodding. “Yes.”

Marina inspected him suspiciously. “What did you say your family name was?”

“I didn’t. It’s Elliot. My father is James Elliot.”

The son of my best buyer. . . Now I have to keep him
. But the kid didn’t need to know that. “Well, now I’m in a bit of a bind,” Marina said thoughtfully. “I can’t take you back to Sydney; we’re exactly on schedule, and any delays mean less money for me and my crew. But I can’t very well take you all the way to England. I
could
throw you into the ocean . . .”

“My family is rich!” Roy blurted out. “Very rich. They’d pay you for my safe return—double what you’d normally charge a passenger.”

Marina pretended to consider his offer. “
Or
, in exchange for the same amount of money, I could drop you off in Seattle—our next stop—and leave you to your own devices. You’re obviously very clever, and I’m certain your parents would happily give me some reward, in exchange for not anonymously murdering you.” When he didn’t immediately respond, Marina stood up. “It’s a bit rainy this time of year in Washington,” she finished, heading for the exit.

“There’s more!” Roy exclaimed. Marina turned around, her expression daring him to impress her. “Do you believe in love, Captain?”

“I pray you aren’t trying to seduce me,” Marina replied flatly.

“No, no, no,” Roy said, utter distain written on his features. “You look like you’re my mother’s age.”

“You said I looked young—”

“What I meant to say,” Roy continued, a dreamy expression appearing on his face, “is that there’s a girl.” Marina rolled her eyes. “She’s not just any girl—she’s gorgeous and brilliant. We were neighbors before my father forced me to move to that bloody city. She said she’d wait for me, but why wait if we don’t have to?”

“Is this actually supposed to convince me to take you all the way to England?”

Roy bit his lip. “I’d kind of hoped so.” Marina sighed and headed for the door again. “Come on—just listen for one moment! We’re in love, she and I.”

“I just don’t care.”

“But hasn’t there ever been someone out there, someone you’d do anything for? You can’t tell me you’ve always been a terrifying bi—” Roy cut himself off, apparently realizing that he wasn’t in a position to call anyone names. “—bi-ee-autiful . . . terrifying
ly
beautiful woman—
captain,
who—”

“Just stop. Your asinine reasoning pains me.”

“But don’t you have someone you love?” His tone had turned desperate.

The question gave her pause. She so often neglected to mention her sister, perhaps out of a need to avoid association with that matrimonial life she had shoved aside. Or perhaps it was because she so rarely allowed herself to acknowledge it aloud, that prickling fondness she felt in her heart towards her sister.

It was not the same love of which Roy spoke, but it made no difference in her answer. She turned without hesitation and said, “Yes.”

“Then you must know what it’s like to be separated, how agonizing it is.”

The statement struck a chord with her. “I do,” she said, this time a bit more softly.

There was something in Roy’s eyes, something naive yet sincere, that spoke to Marina on a deeper level. “Then you know why I have to get back.”

Marina sighed and looked down, no longer willing to match his gaze. “We will discuss this later.”

The moment Marina saw the disturbance in the cloud cover, she knew.

Without hesitation, she set aside her spy glass and veered as sharply to port as her airship would allow. The entire contraption groaned. With her free hand, Marina slammed on the button labeled “emergency” and a jarring buzz filled the Zeppelin. Within moments, her small crew had arrived on her deck.

Viktor seemed particularly irate. “What is the meaning of this?”

“We have pirates,” Marina said, knowing her words would trigger an immediate flood of fear through the men.

“What?” Artur stammered. “Are you sure?” Marina handed him the spy glass, and he gasped when he spotted the signs of another airship. “Maybe they haven’t seen us.”

“They’re headed straight for us,” Marina countered. “But maybe.”
Maybe.

“What do you want us to do, Captain?”

Marina bit her lip as a plan quickly formed in her head. “First, get the kid out of the cellar. We’re going to need his help, too.”

Roy’s hands were still tied as Viktor dragged him into Marina’s headquarters. “Was he serious?” Roy said upon seeing Marina. “Are there really pirates trailing us?”

“Gaining on us, presumably.”

“Do you have any kind of weapons? Like, a canon mounted on the outside?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. This is a Zeppelin, not an airplane. It’s designed to be bulky, but decently fast and capable of protecting itself from most threats simply because it can fly straight over it, so it’s ideal for oceanic transportation—”

“I do not need a lecture on flight mechanics. I would really prefer to figure out how to not be murdered by pirates.”

“I could still throw you overboard—that would guarantee that you’re not murdered by pirates. So, if you’d at least like to maintain a few options for how you die, I’d suggest you shut up and listen.” With her arm still attached to the main deck, Marina turned to face her men. “We can’t fight them; our only option is to run, but in order to have a chance at running, we have to be lighter than them.”

“We’re already running on near empty!” Grigory exclaimed. “What more do you want us to do?”

“We’ll dump everything else.
Everything
. Food and water, clothing, cooking supplies—everything. I’ve already set us on course back to Sydney. We can restock everything and even dump the kid off for good measure.” She shot him a glance to remind him that he was still to keep quiet. “Being six days behind is far less than ideal, but ultimately I’d prefer that to being dead.” They all nodded in agreement. “And I mean
everything
; little things will add up. Now go! I’ll open the loading bay just a fraction.”

They, including Marina after she opened the hatch, all scrambled out of the room and around the large airship, gathering absolutely everything that wouldn’t be vital to their return home. Excess clothing—not that there was much—food, cleaning supplies, spare shoes. Marina even threw out some of her fancier arm extensions, reminding herself, for sanity’s sake, that she could simply make new ones . . . hopefully.

Only one item caused Marina to hesitate—those silly aviator goggles Larissa had insisted she take on her long journey. Despite the madness around her, the dashing to and fro of her crew members and Roy, she had taken a moment, allowing fierce sentiment to fill her as she removed the goggles from her dark hair and stroked the worn leather.

“Marina! Marina, look at me!” Upon entering their home, Marina is met by the sight of her tiny sister prancing around in her spare uniform, the over-sized leather vest and trousers making for an amusing sight, especially with the goggles strapped firmly to her pig-tailed hair. “I’m an inventor pilot!”

Marina spares a glance at the landlady fast asleep on a chair. She was paid handsomely to watch the rambunctious four-year-old. But Marina turns her attention back to Larissa. “Well, look at you.”

Marina’s heart clenched at the memory.
Someday I’ll buy you a new pair
.
Someday, when things get better.

They’ll never get better,
was the horrid reply to her inner monologue.

Marina held the goggles over the open sea. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, forcing her eyes shut as it dropped from her hand.

They had indeed gained some speed, Marina noted, as she studied the ocean below her. The rest of them were still dumping whatever they could, even bits of the ship itself, under Marina’s instruction. A pit settled in her stomach.
It wasn’t enough.

She caught only the tiniest glimpse of something dark fluttering above them, small enough that under different circumstances she would not have even thought about it, especially on such a cloudy evening. But there it was, that small something that seemed to fall from the sky and rapidly swing towards them.

She pushed the “emergency” button once again, the sharp noise alerting her crew to assemble by her, before detaching herself and selecting one of the few arm extensions she had saved—essentially a metal hand, but with sharp appendages instead of fingers. When disguised under her leather gloves, nothing appeared amiss.

Artur arrived first, followed closely by Viktor and Roy. Grigory was the last to arrive. “What’s the news?” he said.

“They’re on our ship,” Marina said, locking the door behind him. “Their ship is on top of ours and they’ve swung aboard. Now, help me barricade the door. We need to try and buy ourselves whatever time we can.”

They all jumped to work, using any leftover objects they could, until Viktor spoke up. “But, is there a point? We’re just prolonging the inevitable now.”

“If there’s even a chance of escaping this,” Roy said, “we should take it.”

“We should fight,” Grigory said with a frightening grin. “They’ll rue the day they tried to rob this ship.”

“They’ll kill us anyway.” Marina gave him a solemn nod. “We’ll do whatever we can.”

Barbaric cries interrupted their discussion. The intruders began banging on their reinforced door, and soon the crew’s pitiful attempts at a barricade broke straight down the middle. One more powerful hit, and it fell. The control deck was suddenly swarmed with Fijian pirates.

The pirates outnumbered them two to one. They quickly subdued and restrained Marina, Roy, and her crew, and lined them up. One pirate, presumably the leader with his long braid and fancier, though still threadbare, attire, began yelling at them in his foreign tongue, then at his men. Roy suddenly spoke up and, in what Marina could only imagine was perfect French, began speaking to the pirate.

The leader seemed taken aback and listened while he gathered his wits again. He spoke back to Roy, this time more calmly. Though it probably only lasted a minute or less, in Marina’s adrenaline-rushed mind, it felt like hours. Whatever Roy was saying clearly intrigued the imposing man.

Roy suddenly began protesting loudly, and both he and Marina were hoisted off the ground and escorted out of the room. She realized what was happening when cries of pain erupted behind her, and though she struggled to escape, there was naught she could do to save her crew. She forced away tears, refusing to show such weakness even as she heard the sickening “thump” of what was presumably their bodies hitting the wooden floor.

Marina lost focus as they were dragged along the familiar deck. She had hardly known them, and though it was a personal survival instinct for her to distrust people, she was filled with genuine regret for never truly caring until now. Artur, Viktor, Grigory . . . Their fragile lives stolen in an act of cruel brutality.