Queen of the Sky Frontier - Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Eden stood at the bow of the ship and looked out over the fantastical sweep of the landscape far below. They were somewhere over Missouri, and the muddy brown curl of the Mississippi flowed sluggishly to the East. The farmland looked like a checkered quilt laid over rolling hills, scrubbed here and there by patches of dark forest. The sky was so blue it seemed electric, and the first day of 1868 was deeply, searingly cold at this altitude.

She pulled off her gloves one after the other, working her hands against the chill. She slapped the gloves together thoughtfully, then tucked them in her belt and turned to face the ship behind her.

Not a foot from her face six men stood with bayonets held ready and their rifles cocked. The wind pulled her hair around in front of her face and she patiently tucked it back behind her ear. She'd taken to wearing it in heavy masses of small braids to keep it from getting in her way, but without her hat it was becoming unruly.

Behind her ring of guards the deck of this ship swarmed with the sort of men who disliked being called 'pirates', they preferred "privateer" for its more romantic connotations, but they were a similar breed of men, if slightly more well-groomed. One man came forward, in a red sweeping coat and a tall tricorn hat, his sword at his side but his hand on it. The guards parted to let him through.

"Well," he said, smiling wide enough it interfered with the clarity of his speech. "As I live, Captain Eden Kane." He looked her up and down. "I had rather expected an amazon, a titan in human form, though -" he grinned, showing a gold tooth. "I had not believed the talk of you being beautiful."

Eden glanced around, as if he did not exist. This was a smaller ship than she was used to, though of a new design she was not intimately familiar with. It was clearly based on the Magister - class designs she had once perused, though the execution had wandered far from the original documents: two yards more beam, likely to help make room for the more powerful engines she felt throbbing under her boots. The deck was open, with high gunwales cut with firing ports, though no guns ranked the open deck where they might be hit. She was a clean-lined, armor-plated and sleek little warship, and from the look of it she took a crew of twenty-four or so.

Eden's own vessel - the larger, wooden-hulled Cacafuego - was drawn up alongside, ropes made fast and the men from this ship clambering over gangplanks to board her. She was a Santander - class ship, made in Mexico a decade ago, and she flew the black and red flag Eden had adopted as her standard, blazoned with the stylized "K".

"I have to say I am disappointed," the privateer captain said, tapping his fingers on his brass sword-hilt. "Capturing the storied, the legendary Eden Kane without so much as a fight? No desperate duel of cannon, no clash of steel, no battle to the death." He sighed, gestured to her waist, where her belt held a sheath and holster, both empty. "You are not even armed, for Gods' sake. What manner of pirate are you?"

Eden again said nothing. She counted men as they moved about their business behind this idiot. Her relentless Experimental brain reeled off numbers, marked guns and placement, swords and the new shine on the brass that told of much upkeep and little use. She marked the way the crew looked askance at the drop as they crossed from ship to ship. They were green, still afraid of heights, as she'd been last summer the first time she'd stepped aboard an airship.

The privateer captain made to say something else but was interrupted by his mate, who plucked the elbow of his captain's coat. "Sir?"

The captain looked annoyed at the intrusion. "Yes Mister Cooley?"

"Ship's a ghost, sir," the mate said, and Eden noted the reflexive twitch of his right hand - the salute he held back despite the impulse. A navy man.

"What?" the captain said, finally turning his attention from leering at Eden. He adjusted his hat as the wind plucked at it, and she saw he was going quite bald underneath it. It was terribly cold, but Eden knew just how much time she had before the chill impaired her. Knew exactly.

"No one aboard, sir. Not a soul. No crew, no command, nothing." The mate looked like he was almost desperate to salute, held himself rigidly stiff.

"Cargo?" the captain said, testy. Eden watched him closely. Now would be the test of things.

The mate shrugged a bit. "Food and water, lumber, nails -"

The captain snarled. "I don't mean that horse-shit!" he snapped. "This is a pirate ship! Where is the treasure?" He remembered who he was talking to and whirled back to face Eden. "Where is your treasure?"

Eden looked over the ring of guards, measuring their readiness. Two of them held their weapons properly - army men, or marines. The others were sloppy and one of them wouldn't meet her gaze. She dismissed him, knowing he wouldn't be able to bring himself to stick her.

"Dammit!" the captain said, stepping closer. Almost. "Where is your treasure?"

Eden smiled, a soft, sweet smile that should have made him worry. "Privateer, hmm? Is that how Congress is proposing to deal with the Brethren of the Sky now?" She leaned a bit closer, conspiratorial. "You get a commission to attack us? Lion's share of the plunder?"

"Damn you, girl, I'll -" he stepped forward again. Close enough now.

"And how much am I worth now?" she said. She turned the small bolt over and over in her right hand. "The last reward poster I saw was months ago - what am I worth brought alive to stand trial?"

"Twenty-five thousand dollars, girl," he said. Her obvious lack of fear was beginning to get to him.

Eden whistled. "Not bad for a beginner." She looked him in the face, cocked her head to the side. "Do they say I'm an Experimental?"

He snorted. "I don't believe in that rubbish."

"Oh? Well. Let me demonstrate." She held the little bolt up in front of his face, and he flinched a bit in spite of himself. "Here we have an ordinary bolt."

He smirked. "Oh, is it magic tricks now?"

"Sort of," she said. She flicked the bolt to her left where it chimed off the steel rim of an exhaust pipe that threaded wisps of steam from the banked engines. It made a series of clattering sounds as it rattled down the pipe and away into the bowels of the ship.

"This is a modified Magister-class ship, and even though the engines are larger, this still seems to be a pressure release vent in place to bleed off excess steam pressure when the drive is banked and the reclamation condensers are not in use - they require a certain level of pressure to operate, since they use convection to condense water from escaped steam." Eden could recite exact figures in her sleep, but felt it would be lost on this man.

He laughed. "So that tiny bolt is going what - to blow up my ship?"

"Oh no, nothing like that," she said. "I just know exactly where that bolt will go, so it makes an excellent signal."

"Enough!" he growled, reaching for her. "I want to know where your treasure is!"

"You should be worried about my crew," she said without giving ground at all.

"What crew? You don't have a cre -" He stopped, turned to look at the Cacafuego as it finally dawned on him there was no way on Earth a single person could pilot a ship that size.

Eden's smile widened as a blizzard of gunshots erupted belowdecks. There was shouting, and a shrill scream like an attacking panther. The aft hatch banged open and a horde of corsairs poured out onto the deck, sixguns blazing and the sun flaming on their swords.

The captain and her guards whirled to face the attack, and Eden moved quick and precise. She reached around and snapped the pistol from his holster before he could reach it. He turned to find his own gun staring him in the face.

She snapped back the hammer and fired a shot past his ear, the report like a breaking bone in the sharp air. He jumped back and her left hand snaked out, caught the knucklebow of his sword and drew it out with a clean sing of steel. The guards heard the shot and whirled, stabbed out with their bayonets, and impaled the captain from behind on three keen points.

One of them lunged for her and she parried easily, shot him with the pistol and dropped him to the deck clutching himself. The three men who'd stabbed the captain reeled back in shock, pulling their weapons free. One of them recovered and lunged for her. She sidestepped like she knew exactly where his blow would strike and cut his suspenders with two easy flicks of her blade. His pants dropped to his knees and she cracked the pistol barrel across his hand. He dropped the rifle and staggered away from her.

The deck became a whirl of bloodied steel and the pall of gunsmoke that covers any battlefield. Eden switched hands so she held the sword in her right, faced down her remaining guards. They backed up, raised their rifles, and then another inhuman scream ripped out of the smoke like a thunderbolt.

Zenobia Santiago landed among them like a tiger-striped thunderbolt. Her buckskin breeches were already splashed with blood, her hair a flying mane of braids and bone-beads. Above the waist she wore little but a scrap of leather stitched with fingerbones that did nothing to conceal her visibly pregnant belly. Bandoliers draped her torso, hung with knives and pistols like their own kind of armor.

One sweep of her cutlass beheaded a man, and then she snapped up her cut-down shotgun and blasted another one into a rain of red and bone shards. The last two flung down their guns and groveled on the deck. Eden watched as Zenobia visibly controlled herself, stood over the two men breathing heavily. The beast-woman lived always with the killing urge instilled within her by Doctor Laclos.

The fight was already tapering off, and Zenobia turned to look it over, her bloody sword dripping red on the men who cowered at her feet, making them whimper. Eden stepped closer and touched the stripes that zigzagged up her companion's back, loving the feel of the hot, naked skin.

"I think it's done," Eden said.

A billow of wind scattered the smoke and she saw it was true. There were knots of men kneeling on the deck, hands over their heads, her own men standing over them with weapons ready. She counted eight corpses, six more who looked wounded. Her own men seemed unharmed.

"Captain." Eden turned as her second, Maximilian Belial, emerged from the smoke with his red sword in hand. Once-Captain Belial stood tall and lean, his dark face made more magnetic by the scar that ravaged from brow to chin on the left side of his face. A gold-stitched eyepatch covered his missing eye. He was the deadliest swordsman Eden knew of, a pirate, a dastard, and a rake. She had humbled him yet spared his life, so he served her at present. Sometimes she thought he was her friend.

He saluted in his way with a flourish of his blade and then cleaned it on the cloth at his belt. "Below is secure. We have the engine crew prisoners, all unharmed, but one."

"Ah, I suppose they saw your fearsome countenance and threw down their weapons?" Eden said.

"Nearly," he said, grinning through his perpetual sneer. "I only had to skewer one as we climbed through the gunports." He looked around. "A risky plan, I still say."

"And what is risk to a pirate?" Eden said. "I kept them occupied on deck while you and the rest swung under and boarded belowdecks. You're fortunate I knew how to open the kind of port hatch they use."

"And what now?" Zenobia said. The killing fog was lifted from her golden eyes, and she looked more herself, despite the smell of blood. "Another privateer. We scuttle it and move on? We should not be so far East."

Eden holstered the captain's pistol and stabbed his sword into the deck as one of her crewmen brought her own blade - the gold-etched masterpiece she had taken from Captain Asmodel Dire's dead hand. She held it up so the sun glimmered off the exquisite steel.

"We have to keep an eye on what our enemies are doing," she said. "The situation can change in a heartbeat." She sheathed the sword cleanly and took her gloves from her belt, pulled them on against the cold. "For example, this is the eighth privateer we've taken who had a bounty on me - on all of us - but this is a much finer ship than the junk the others flew. They are beginning to learn they can't kill us cheaply."

She waved to the prisoners. "Some of those are ex-military, not just tavern sweepings and other scum. They are not good enough to beat us yet, but they are learning. And that is something we will have to beware of." She made herself stop, not wanting to have this argument now. She knew her companions would not want to hear it.

She stepped to the rail and touched the cold steel bolted over the oak - armor. Even here it was a good quarter-inch thick. The hull on this ship would be able to withstand a great deal more punishment than a wood-hulled ship. The fact was, the Cacafuego's copper-armored hull was obsolete, as were too many of the corsair ships. "I'll want to look her over more carefully, but I think I want to keep this one."

"Keep this scow?" Zenobia snorted. "You don't even know if it has a bath yet."

Eden caught Belial's eye. If she meant to keep this ship, he wondered if that meant she was granting him back his own ship. Well, she wasn't going to answer him now. "I suppose we'll find out what kind of accommodations our late captain had aboard."

Her men were gathering the prisoners together, fourteen upright, three more prostrate with wounds. Eden gestured to Belial. "See to the injured."

He took a breath, then nodded. "Yes, Captain."

Eden paced down the line of prisoners, looking them over. She saw they didn't know what to think of her, and she was used to that. Zenobia looked like a pirate, while Eden was slight and girlish. There was nothing girlish about her glance as she looked at them now. "Congratulations, gentlemen," she said, pitching her voice to carry over the winter wind of New Year's Day. "You have survived your captain's foolishness. I am Captain Eden Kane, and I welcome you to the Brethren of the Sky - The Sky-Pirates of the Rio Grande!"

Continued in Chapter 2

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