Queen of the Sky Frontier - Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Eden found that absence had not, in fact, made her heart grow any fonder towards the festering boil of a town known ironically as Bagdad. Situated on a sinking sandbar at the mouth of the Rio Grande on the Gulf, it had been built as a smuggler's port and grown as such during the war until it was practically a boomtown.

When air travel became possible the town began to sprout towering, makeshift gantries made from the lumber of wrecked sea ships that were soon overgrown with a shantylike festoon of saloons, brothels, and opium dens like barnacles. From the air it looked like an accident rather than a town. From the ground, she knew, it looked worse.

With Zenobia at the wheel they drew the Warlock up to one of the makeshift docks and made her fast. In the slanting afternoon light Eden could see people gathering down in the streets and at windows and balconies to look over the new arrival. New-made ships made few appearances out here in the West. Eden banked the engines and watched carefully while the crew jumped over the side and made her fast to the slip.

"Bosun!" she hollered, pleased with the volume of her voice. She'd not had much practice at hollering in her life as a clerk, but now she believed she was getting good at it.

He appeared. "Captain!"

"Shore leave at your discretion, but no new man goes out unless he's with two veterans, and no groups smaller than three," she said.

"Aye, Captain."

"And see to bringing on more hands. We're a bit short. I want ten or twelve new men. Do the best you can." She finished shutting down the drive, felt the ship settle as surplus buoyancy bled off.

"Aye, Captain. Though like as not they'll be shitfoots looking for glory," he answered.

"Well, we all do what we can with what we have. Make sure to keep at least six men aboard. I want a guard." Eden buttoned her coat. It was warmer here on the Gulf, but she needed to look as imposing as she could manage.

"Aye, Captain." The bald old man peglegged off and Eden smiled.

"I should pay him more," she said. "A good Bosun is hard to find."

"You should screw him then," Zenobia said. "He can't get that from just any captain. And you should give me the orders to give to him anyway."

"Him? It would be like screwing driftwood." Eden chortled. "And I haven't time to wait for you to relay orders. We've a meeting to attend. I need you with me." Eden touched Dire's sword at her hip, tracing the elaborately pierced guard designs with her fingers.

"You expect trouble?" Zenobia said.

"It's the Brethren," Eden snorted. "There's always trouble."

---

The Gullywasher had seen better days, and that could have been said long before the fire that gutted the lower floors. Now the saloon masquerading as a whorehouse made from old ship parts and a facade stolen from an old plantation mansion occupied the top three levels of the gantry, seeming to get bigger as it went up, so the whole structure looked likely to topple at any moment.

Inside, the halls were long and uneven, the floor and walls twisting over the distances, so from one end it was like looking into a winding cavern. The electric lights burned low with the strained power from the old ship-engines that ran them, and the whole place smelled like perfume and charcoal.

The Brethren of the Sky - or rather this small gathering of them - were in a smoking-den that Eden remembered rather better than she wished. There was a new couch and a new hookah pluming smoke into the air, but the walls still bore bullet-holes in the florid paper, and no one had bothered to entirely remove the bloodstains from the floor. Eden looked around her and sniffed. Last time she'd been here she'd been disguised as a whore and all manner of insanity had ensued.

This time she stepped through the door as a captain in her own right, sword and pistol ready in her belt and Zenobia at her back. Her fellow corsairs looked around when she entered, and she marked them one by one.

The only one happy to see her was Diamondback Sally Parker, the half-Comanche Experimental captain of the Cannibal Owl. She reclined on a couch with her short legs draped over the arm, hand just lightly touching the hilt of her sword. She was a master of the blade, and only Belial could claim to be her better.

Next was Captain Slade, a grizzled old man with one arm and one eye, though the ones he had left were said to be twice as good. He slouched in a chair across from Sally, scowling through his drooping moustache and idly fondling one of the six pistols he wore around his waist.

Beside him was Captain Fuego, a fat latin from somewhere unpronounceable far south of Mexico. He had a craggy, implacable face, a rotund belly, and an inexplicable mane of deep red hair bound up in a single thick braid, as was his crimson beard. He had more rings in his ears than on his fingers, said fingers numbering only nine.

Last was the dark, panthrine form of Captain Malik. He was a towering man so lean he looked like rawhide, his skin so black it was nearly blue even in the light. His bald head gleamed darkly and his wide-set eyes glared hungrily from deep-set sockets. He was from the Barbary Coast of Africa, and his ancestors had been pirates of one kind or another for hundreds of years.

All of them scowled one way or another to see her, all but Sally. They flicked glances one at the other, and settled more deeply into their seats. They had not expected her to be here, had not wanted her here. And these captains gathered in this room were Eden's strongest supporters - those she actually trusted, so far as that went.

"Gentlemen," Eden said, seating herself on the couch as Sally moved her legs for her. Zenobia loomed behind her with arms folded, an unspoken threat. "So glad you could all make it. Though really, such a convocation should be held in El Dorado, not this swill-pot."

"Hell with you, missy," Slade grunted. "We're here to talk about whether we're gonna stick with you or not. Don't need you to be here for that." He glowered at Fuego. "I told you not to invite this damned snake-woman. I knew she'd spread the word."

"If there is a problem, captains, then I would like to know what it is," Eden said. "Some may call me the leader of the Brethren, but we are not living under tyranny out here. That's what we all came West to escape. I cannot and will not force you to stay in El Dorado. If you want to fly off and join Captain Black, go right to it. But I will know why."

"If we are free," Malik said in his deep accent. "Then why do you command us as if we were slaves? You give us coordinates and times and we face privateers. Not fat merchants, not liners with wealthy passengers to be robbed and ransomed. We face fighting ships who carry nothing but powder and stores! These are things we need, but I am tired of plundering blood and steel! I want gold, and rich goods, and soft women for my bed."

Eden sighed. It was so hard to hold these brigands to any purpose, to explain anything more complex than loot and plunder to them so they would listen. She had to try, or everything would be for naught.

"And now your ships are heavy with new guns and fresh powder," she said. "You are laden with fine rifles and good steel knives. Your ships are planked with solid timbers and new nails. You are in the best fighting shape you have ever seen. Or am I wrong?"

Slade scowled and looked away. Malik shook his head, expressionless. "You are not wrong," he said. Fuego said nothing. Eden suspected a penetrating intelligence behind that stone-faced exterior.

"Good, then this part of my design has not been undertaken in vain." Eden took the hookah stem and drew a long puff of the honey-soaked tobacco, breathed out a cloud of smoke. She was getting a taste for it. "The Brethren of the Sky now number less than sixty ships, while Black, by my count, has just over thirty. We are all so rarely gathered in one place, however, that I must assume he, like any intelligent commander, will attempt to match a stronger force of his own against a weaker one of ours. Thus, I must ensure you are all well-fitted for battle."

Sally laughed. "Clever then, go on." Slade growled at her and she slapped her arm at him.

"Black and his Renegades deploy farther East than we do. They have no code machine, so they cannot read transmissions and pick easy targets. They raid towns and prey on such shipping as they find." Eden sat back, sword across her lap. "I have a new ship now, just captured days ago. A steel-clad Magister taken from a privateer." She took another puff on the hookah. "The privateers are getting better ships and more money, that will hurt Black's people more than it hurts us, and sooner. They will be caught between us and the edge of the better-armed privateers like eggs in a crusher. I would expect them to try something desperate soon."

Fuego nodded. "And so we must be ready."

Eden nodded. "Indeed, we must. Like me or not, gentleman. If you don't want to sail under me your alternative is Black. You are all here because you despise him and he likely hates you as well. If you oust me as leader of the Brethren, you are left with him. Also, I will take the code machine with me if I am forced out. That means back to the old ways - hunting, scavenging for every strike. Hoping your luck holds." She shook her head. "No way to live as a corsair, my friends."

"And what about Hood?" Slade growled. "He's the one you don't want to talk about."

"Ah yes," Eden said. "Him."

"Word is, Hood has gathered more than a hundred ships," Fuego said quietly. "All former corsairs save for a few old Confederatos. He is gathering an armada we cannot hope to match."

"If it is, indeed, us he hopes to match," Eden said, thinking aloud. "Hood cannot be our first order of business. Captain Black is our more immediate foe."

"You mean he is your more immediate foe," Malik said. "If he were removed many of his captains would drift back to you, strengthening your position."

Eden took another draw on the hookah, waved a hand in the smoke. "Hood will be our problem eventually, probably sooner than we'd like. We don't stand a chance against anyone if we are divided against ourselves." She watched them, seeing the seething disaffection of Malik, Fuego's carefully guarded watchfulness, and the tension building in Captain Slade's rangy form. His lone hand - the right one - crept a finger closer to one of his pistols and she saw his nostrils flare.

She leaped just as he moved, before anyone else could react at all. She sprang on him just as his pistol cleared the holster, landed astride him with her left hand preventing him from aiming the gun at her while her right held a slim blade at his throat.

Steel sang and guns cocked as the others reacted. Malik sprang to his feet with a knife in his hand while Fuego faced the tableaux with a hand on his pistol. Sally was on her feet like a panther, with a hiss and her sword in hand. An ugly double click caught everyone's attention as Zenobia leveled her chopped-down double-bore shotgun across the room.

"Well now," Eden said coolly. "Isn't this a pretty picture." She leaned in and breathed in Slade's face. "Planning to shoot me, Zeb? Bad timing."

He sneered and let the hammer back down on the Colt, released it to dangle from his finger by the trigger-guard. "Just making a point, is all." He swallowed past the knife-edge at his throat.

"Indeed, and what would that be?" Eden breathed slow, hiding the way her heart knocked against her ribs.

"We're pirates, damn it girl," he snarled. "My crew doesn't sail for high ideals or some damned empire of dreams out here in the nothing. They sail for plunder, and we ain't had near enough! All this last two months you've had us after privateers, privateers, privateers! All the while Black and the Renegades raid towns and take fat prizes. Maybe they have to hunt the old fashioned way, but at least they're hunting what they want!"

Eden sighed, putting as much long-suffering into it as she could. "Zebulon, you may accuse me of many things, but do you think I am stupid? Answer true."

His eyes flicked side to side. "No."

"Mm." She snapped the hanging pistol from his hand and spun it, poked him under the chin with it. "So you don't think I have a purpose in mind to all this?"

"A'course you do," he said, not flinching. "We just don't trust to it being our purpose."

"Oh, Zeb." Eden stood up off him, gave the pistol a border roll and handed it to him, butt first. "Let's walk through this, shall we? The privateers have always been a half-measure. The federals don't want to pay to mount another armed incursion out here. Hell, they still don't want to admit the last one even happened, it was such a disaster." She twirled the knife around her fingers and sheathed it up her sleeve. "So instead they offer bounties and let investors and gloryhounds do the work, yes?"

It was Malik who nodded, blade still in his hand. "Yes."

"Now the privateers are getting better funded and equipped, so the bounties have increased, otherwise no one would front the money for a ship, if you follow me. What do you suppose is driving the bounties up?" She kept her eyes on Slade, but it was Fuego she watched from the corner of her eye. He was the cleverest of them, if not the loudest. She could see him begin to understand.

"It's Black," Sally said. "Do you fools not see it? Black raids towns and makes a mess everywhere. He makes trouble that cannot be ignored."

"Indeed," Eden said. "So when the inevitable privateer expedition or even another navy incursion comes, it will go for him, not us." She looked at each of them. "And it will come soon, no mistake. Even the fabricators at Department L cannot cover up everything. Pressure builds to do something about the corsairs, and that will vent itself on Black. By not taking civilian prizes we buy time."

"Dear me," a new voice said. Everyone turned as the dapper, smartly-dressed form of Agent Gray stepped into the room, his metal right hand resting easily on the pistol at his belt. "Is this a bad time?" he said, looking over the ready weapons. "I can always come back later."

Continued in Chapter 8

---