Zeppelin Quest I: A New Adventure!

Sighing to yourself, you leaned up against a bulkhead carefully. Aleksander was still off doing Captain Things, probably setting a course and manning the bridge like he always did. Not your problem, personally. Nobody wanted the chief of the espatiers to stand around looking bored, considering the amount of grief that your boys would make. They were quite good at that, really. Warmed your heart, not that it was particularly hard. The Valdostas had always had thin frames and thin blood, and just because you were a girl didn't change any of that.

That didn't change the fact you were Lucia Valdosta, head of Espatiers, and you desperately needed something to do. Sighing, you just headed off to the Espatier Quarters on the topdeck of the citadel. Boredom, as your old teacher had said, meant you obviously needed to be doing more training. To be fair to the old man, you did need to push further. Those Gras that Alek had gotten you were still sitting in their crates, since holding a firing drill on the topdeck would be problematic in the Aether, and in most cases flat-out not allowed. That said, you needed to get to it. Whether to drill or not to drill, that was the question. To suffer the slings and arrows of your best friend's rage, or by taking up arms to soothe it?

"Hey, Lucia!"

And here came Donald! An excellent way to break your moral quandry. Grinning, you leaned up on the bulkhead. "Donald, what brings you to my neck of the woods?"

"Lauri's gotten sick, actually." The First Mate said, frowning. "We need you to run a guns drill on the topdeck. The bearers on the ammo team have the blanks laid out already, so it shouldn't be a huge problem."

"Lauri's sick?"

"Yeah, something from the mess set him off. Czeslawa's gotten him dosed up in the medical bay, but that's only worth so much. Don't want him near the guns when he's like this."

You shook your head, sighing. "He's stubborn, like all of us. This is a good job- we can't loose it."

"And we won't. If I know one thing, the only thing to get Alek to give up this ship is another one, or loosing it entirely. Fought tooth and nail to get the Carolina Anahiem, and this ship is no different."

"He's serious about his dream, isn't he?" you asked rhetorically. "I remember flying with him, and he was always the safest pilot I knew."

"Flying is his life. I was talking with Mrs. van Riebeck once, back before they had the manor house, and he never touched the ground until he was three. She lived on the ship with Caspar until she was ready for Alek's sister to be born-"

You fell off the wall and into Donald like a thunderbolt. "He has a sister?!"

As the young man's face stilled, you sensed you'd hit an old nerve. "Had. She was with his father for an early midshipman's cruise, and…"

The silence spoke volumes. When you'd run cargo with Alek, he'd never mentioned a sister, and trying to pry anything out of him on his father was like pulling teeth. You knew he had disapeered in an accident, though, some… eight years ago, thereabouts…

"Oh no." you muttered, the pieces falling together.

"She was with him on the Liberum Mercator when she was lost." Donald said, face drawn. "The ship was presumed broken up in the Aether with all hands lost, after they found six shrouds from her sails floating through the aetheric point around Columbia. They haven't been found since, and after a year lost they were declared presumed dead."

Morbid curiosity drove your words. "And in the shrouds?"

"Scrap metal, and the battered remains of the corpses. The coroners couldn't make heads or tails of the cause of death, and the remains couldn't be identified. They were laid to rest in Columbia with airman's honors. We went once, when the trade was slow a few years ago. Alek was in a bad place, I wasn't much better."

You gulped, nodding. "I'll run that gun drill, now."

Distantly, you heard footsteps over the decking, and you wondered if anyone had overheard. Still, this secret, it wasn't yours to share. It might not have been Donald's secret either for that matter, but that didn't matter now. Moving up, you collected your Espatiers and the gunners for the drill. Eight shots rapid over the broadside, then swing to the opposite and a different elevation to engage. After, you'd be doing volley fire with the Espatiers, and a few bayonet drills. Barking orders dryly, the entire process was ready to go off on a moment's notice.

"BATTERY READY!" the gun captain yelled, waiting.

"Target port, bearing three hundred, elevation twenty! Fire as you bear!"

As the gun shot once, twice, and a third time you watched the ammunition slings carefully. The gun was pedestal mounted, so bags of powder and shells ran out from a pair of lifts, where they'd then be slung and rammed into the gun. All eight shots went out without issue, and you grinned. Lauri had them working together, and damn well at that.

"Target starboard, bearing one zero five, elevation three! Fire as you bear!

This time, the shooting was interrupted halfway by an absence of dummy shells, prompting a glare at down below. You'd need to talk to them about that. Still, once the shells came, the battery did excellently, the six-man crew keeping the gun shooting as long as they could. Grinning, you saluted them for the work.

"Good shooting! Gun crew, stand down from duty!"

As the lot relaxed, you set up the Espatiers with their rifles, and started teaching. Almost an hour of gun safety later, and they could be trusted with live rounds. After that, it was volley, volley, volley. Twenty rifles might not have been much, but it was twenty more than before. Sighing, you dismissed your men and went belowdecks. Time to head to the bath.

---

Between you and the four walls, one of the bigger factors that had been used to snooker you into working with Alek was the proposition of a hot bath whenever you had time for it. Back home, a hot bath meant going to someone's house, heating the water over the fire, and then pouring it in a cramped tub to soak. It eased your aches and pains, loosened the skin, and let you uncurl, even in the slight tubs of Sault ste. Marie. Here, though, in the Ottoman-styled baths with their large tin communal pool and wide open personal baths, you felt almost like a puddle. Back when things had been easier and you were both younger, you and Alek had shared a few baths when the money was running thick and you could afford a hotel room in Detroit. It still marveled you that you could get hot water from a tap, sometimes. The fact there was just pools of the stuff, here, though! Ahhhhhh!

"Might want to avoid doing that." You heard from the door, the light voice spooking you. She must have heard your happy little sigh there. It was Elizabeth, a bathrobe under one arm and her hair loose. "Might attract the wrong attention."

"Of who?" you remarked. "I did flip the sign over on the door."

"Like Alek would notice that sign." Elizabeth harrumphed adorably, her hair shimmying in an amber wave. "Bloody giant."

"Ah, he's seen me in the bath before." You replied, flipping a hand around evenly.

"I did hear about that incident from Czeslawa. You haven't gotten him back for it yet?"

"Why?" you asked carelessly, propping yourself out of the water a bit.

"You seem the type."

You laughed, and smirked as Elizabeth slipped into the communal tub with you. "Well, I would, but it's Alek. He's harmless."

"He is not!"

"Is too!" you objected artfully. "Big ol' softy, he is."

"Can we not?" she said, huffing. "I don't want him falling for a different set of 'softies'."

Your brain tried to process this, and failed miserably. Elizabeth just frowned at you, before cupping her own breasts, and then holding her hands far away from her chest.

"Oh!" you jumped. "Czeslawa!"

"No, I was thinking of you with a pair of lift cells under your shirt yes of course it was Czeslawa."

Paddling over, you looked at her carefully, before the hint of grapes hit your nose with an arcid whiff. "You've had a few haven't you." You muttered under your breath, sidling up to Elizabeth.

"Two." The Navigator muttered back. "Ayse wanted to share a Turkish brandy to see what altitude did to it."

"That's two too many for you." You replied, slipping an arm under her hers and shoring her up with your relative bulk.

"Oh shove off. Not like you're after Alek too… I think…"

Shruging, you felt Elizabeth's head roll back on your arm. "Probably? We're friends, but time's worn on it a little."

"Good… I'ma going to have to share anyway… 'though you'd be nice. Can't tell you're not like… him…"

"Like him?" you asked, feeling the sleepy Navigator start pulling you towards Morpheus' arms.

"Nice guy… lots of muscles… makes me warm insides." Elizabeth said, before finally passing off to sleep. Resisting the temptation to join her, you got the pair of you out of the baths and swaddled up, heading to your cabin. Elizabeth was nice and fluffy, and you didn't like sleeping alone- it always reminded you of the bad times, back when you slept behind the bar in the alley, or wrapped up in your coat under an old lighter hull by the air yard. Not even Alek knew about what the bad times were like for you, and if you had your way he never would.

The fact you thought Elizabeth's sleeping form in your arms was adorable as all hell too didn't hurt. A girl was just as nice as a guy, if all you were measuring was someone to wake up next to- and a little nap never hurt, right?

---

Alek Votes

Things didn't go so good. At all. Rather embarrassing, really. How do you react?
[] Frustration: you spent an hour between buisness on this!
[] Rage: you found the bottles shattered in the cargo stores- that's more than theft, that's plain dangerous!
[] Apathy: what's done is done. Let it rest.

You're almost to Tabriz; you found the way! What's your plan when you get there?
[] write-in

Lucia Vote
[] Find an opportunity to reminisce with Alek
[] Find out what Elizabeth was talking about. You were... comfy?
[] Make sure you can handle the on-and-off that resupplying lighters means.

VOTES NOT CALLED; BONUS MATERIAL

---

Pushing around the dorsal keel of my ship, I sighed to myself absentmindedly. Elizabeth had been secure in her office, the dark draperies hiding the sun as she did things that were most definitely Navigator-y. Or napping. With her, I'd never been able to tell the difference, really. As cute as it was, though, I couldn't handle cute so well right now. I had to be awake in about tomorrow about this time, which meant I couldn't go to sleep, so I needed to do something.

Something about Elizabeth always drew me towards sleep, and it was always something I'd meant to figure out later. Later would continue to be later, though: I had to keep moving. A walking tour of the ship would serve well enough in this regard, letting me keep a clear head and explore my purchase.

The first thing to note was the hull's rather pronounced ellipsis, Most airships attempted to a spherical cross-section, the better to flow through the air gracefully. The Caronline Anahiem's experimental nature went down to her bones, though, in her skeleton trading aerodynamics for dynamic lift, letting her engines take up more of the task to lift the ship as she flew, rather than lifting cells. This design also gave her broad, shallow cargo areas, an ideal that many cargo ships strided towards. Her breakback design didn't help this, though, the decks separated at the bulkheads rather than one longitudinal design. It was nominally for strength, but I had enough design to know the ship wouldn't need it if it was twin-keeled and reinforced as her designer has claimed.

It wasn't as if I'd come into this unprepared. Perhaps the yards had been short material, perhaps the designer had been short money. Perhaps the ship would fall from the sky. 'Perhaps' did nothing but garner fears for later- right now, I had found nothing out of the ordinary, nor anything that would raise concern. No matter what a landlubber said, those two categories were not mutually inclusive. For example, hydrogen leaks could be very ordinary.

Of course, that ship crashed and burned shortly after, but that had nothing to do with my time aboard. I'd just been there to pick up cargo the first time; and rescue whoever I could the second.

As my walk took me forward, I smiled faintly. The ship had a fairly smooth transition from her underslung gondala to the hull, and as I passed above the medical area, mounted to the starboard of the ship. I had gotten close to the bow, and the majority of the ship's living quarters. Looping around in the nose, I looked up and fore to the Navigator's Office, before sighing and making my way back to the stern along the port side. Below me now were the officer's quarters, while inbound of me was the mess and enlisted quarters. It was a mildly cramped bunkroom, while the mess was slightly better. Neither were miracles of design, and I had to crimp my nose a little as I passed the flow lines to the toilets. Putting the heads up half a deck wasn't a bad move, per say, since it let an element of gravity fall into the plumbing, but making people walk up to the heads was almost cruel. If I found suspicious stains on the sides of the ship that needed washing off, I wouldn't be terribly surprised. Good heads were the hallmark of a good ship.

Continuing aft, past the cargo bays and the widest point, I started to smell the hot air of the machinery spaces, and the wet air of the condensation area. The boilers sucked air in from all over the ship, no matter how much engineers tried to vent them clean outside air. In return, they spat back out pure heat, pushing hard on my skin and leaving dry air their remains. The condensers, meanwhile, sucked cool air in through vents on the top of the hull to cool pipes of steam into usable water again, the frequent seep and leak of the pipes exposed to permanent thermal shock making the air there wet and thick, often very heavy. Below and slightly to the fore were the ship's baths, equipped with a handful of tubs. Even further below (it felt humorous to say that about a two-foot difference in distance) were the showers, and then the heads; all were designed to feed gray water to run them to save on total fresh water use.

Below, in the engine room proper, there was a lethargic energy as oilers supplied the lubricants to one of the three engines, it's slow thumping telling of the turboelectric drive's utility. Thanks to the bus bar and electricity lines, I could run the ship's four drive pods off one engine, while other ships needed all engines on, at all times. It was a heady feeling- until I took into account what must have been a titanic cost and weight for the system. The entire ship had been built around these engines, and as Thomas waved to me I scrubbed my chin in thought. I couldn't guess the weight of a drive shaft nor the cables, but I could guess that the result didn't favor the new technology yet. It might eventually- but who knew?

Coming back to the cargo bays, I snorted lightly. Lucia was working out on a thin stringer, pulling herself up with her usual vim and vigor. I could sympathize with exercise in odd places, as her long body made it hard to fit in some spots. She had always been rather vulpine, though I'd only admit under duress it made her look boyish. It had been the subject of more than a few jokes when we were younger, and a rather… formative… incident on my own part.

Speaking of, there was that grin as she slipped off the girder, turning to face me. "Alek." she said, warmly. "Well, Captain Aleksander now, but who's counting?"

"Most of the crew." I replied, resting my hand on the hilt of my old sabre. My father had purchased it in his youth, back in the Civil War, and I kept it now oftentimes as a reminder- and as a symbol of authority. It might whack and thwack everywhere if I wasn't careful, but it was mine.

One of the few things left of him I had.

"Pah, like you'll see them more than once or twice on this trip." Lucia bluffed, what was left of her accent slapping the words with derision. "You're still the Skipper to me."

"Then I hope you don't mind a little spar, like in the old days?" I asked, grinning. She'd won most of those, with dirty tricks and Sardinian wrestling prevailing over my ability to box well over my weight.

"Sure. Steel, or fists?"

"Steel." you mentioned, drawing the sabre. "There are pirates about."

"Fine by me- just let me see your sword."

Handing it over, I winced as she tossed it away with a snort.

"You don't want something too long down here. In between gas-bags, on the railings, in the stringers- you'll never have room to use it. Swords are expensive, too- even old wristbreakers like that one. Always have something you can afford to drop over the side- because you're going to drop it."

"Any suggestions?"

"A gun." Lucia said flatly, raising an eye at me. "Failing that, something you can use in tight, that's cheap. My old man taught me macework for a reason, but I think I have the thing for you."

Taking a hatchet from her, I inspected Lucia's gift. It was short, barely over a foot, with a light and thin head of cheap steel. Swishing it around experimentally, I listened to her continuation.

"Pick something you can fight inside with, that you won't cut your ship half to ribbons with. Make it cheap. I've got a basket of these things handy if you need more."

"Right. Are you ready?"

"Born ready." Lucia said, smirking. As we both readied ourselves, an invisible bell chimed silently, before the spar was engaged.

---

So, because this falls up the alley of the fine folks over at Sea Lion Press et all, I'm submitting a version of this work for Actual Publication so I can get money. Money is important, since it lets me write more. It might even become a book at some point. Anyway, check them out, send me Over There some love, see this story told from first person and after a heavy does of the Editor Stick. There might even be more waifus or something!