The Graveyard of Empires - Chapter 10

Chapter 10

The Fabulous Airship of Debauchery and Wickedness

Eden woke up in a very happy place, firmly ensconced between Zenobia and Sally in the grand cabin. It was as well-appointed in here as a mansion on a hill, and the rich woods and deep pile rugs created an aura of warmth and comfort. The spacious, silk-swaddled bed didn't hurt either. She stretched and sat up, leading to Zenobia grunting and rolling over. Nestled into the curve of her belly, Belial made a small growling sound and covered her face. Eden sighed. The spawn had got free of her crib again. She was going to have to install a lid on that thing, with a lock.

Eden slipped out of bed and Sally rolled over, sat up. Naked she shoved off the line of patterned scales down her back that gave her the name "Diamondback". She pushed her hair out of her face and grunted. "It's not morning yet, is it?"

"Yes," Eden said, getting dressed. "I'm going to check our position, see if we're close to the Princess."

"Should be by now, she's regular as a geyser, that one." Sally yawned. "Not much point in being a flying brothel if no one can find you."

Zenobia growled and the two of them grinned and shut up. Sally slithered out of bed and began to dress, just a step or two behind Eden. In here it was hard to even feel the ship move, adding to the illusion that they were on the ground, not a mile above the earth. By Eden's calculations of speed, they should be somewhere over Kansas by now.

She left the cabin and went forward to the signal station, read the position and the aether traffic. Good, the Princess of Texas was right where she was supposed to be. She sighed. She was still not too eager to see everyone there. In ways she was, but not in others. She left the signalman and then headed aft. The sun came in sharp and bright through the ports, and she knew it would be cold enough outside to freeze your eyeballs, no matter how warm it was down below. Up this high it was always winter, even in July.

She took the companionway back to the cabins and went to where she'd left the Van Drakes. Calliope was so toothsome she'd been tempted to take advantage again, but she found herself savoring it, unwilling to rub all the new shine off the girl too fast. They'd have plenty of time for that.

The guard was dozing on duty and she gave him a good kick to wake him up. "Any problems?"

"No, no ma'am, no captain. No problems at all!" He snapped to and she shook her head. Ex navy men were so stiff, and not in the fun way.

"Fine, get lost," she said.

He snapped a salute. "Yes captain!"

"You're relieved, go fuck a balloon." She pushed the door open and looked in, saw the outer room dimly lit and undisturbed. She went through and peeked into the bedroom, smiled at how the sheets were rucked up. The problem was that only Alexander was in them, and she scowled, stalked back out and caught the guard as he went down the hall.

She grabbed his collar and dragged him back. "Where is Mrs. Van Drake? Did she just wander off? Slip your mind?"

"Err... I didn't see -"

"Where's Calliope?" Alex said, coming to the door. He saw Eden and yanked his robe closed. "What is. . . tell me she didn't go to the engine rooms."

"The engine rooms?" Eden said, and just then the deck lurched slightly underfoot. Her eyes narrowed. "Why did the starboard pump turbine just shut down?" There was a lower hum coming through the deck under her feet, and she turned and headed for the engineering decks at a pace that was almost running, Van Drake trailing behind her.

"I didn't do it!" he protested, running to catch up. "I told her not to!"

"Not to do what?" Sally said, emerging from a side hall and matching Eden's stride. "Not do what who?"

"Let's find out," Eden said, feeling annoyed.

---

There was a kind of pandemonium in the engine rooms, with steam filling the air and a deep rattling, boom repeating itself every few moments. Eden pushed through frightened-looking mechanics and found Calliope at the center of a bustle of activity. In a dressing gown and a stained apron, her hair knotted back in a ponytail, she was busy pulling apart a control panel and rewiring everything inside it while the engineers stared at her in a kind of horror.

"What the hell are you doing?" Eden said. "You're breaking my ship while we're on it! That is the opposite of a clever idea!"

"What?" Calliope turned and looked at her through a pair of goggles, then smiled and pushed them up off her eyes. "Captain! You're up late!"

"It is morning," Eden said. She looked at the flayed panel. "What are you doing?"

"Have I been down here all night?" Calliope looked confused. "Oh, well. I'm reconfiguring the impulse chambers to operate on a tandem switch so we can boost output without using more power. That will boost efficiency of the impulse generators by at least thirty percent and give you more lift with less energy." She turned back to the panel and started putting wires and connections together in a bewildering flurry of motions. "I just have to rewire this panel to control it."

Eden stopped, shook her head. She was not accustomed to dealing with people who had more technical intelligence than she did. The engine boomed again and Eden pointed up toward the noise. "What about that?"

"Oh, that's just the helion gas overspill tanks backing up and cycling too fast because this panel controlled their trim pumps. It will stop when I'm done." Calliope worked with a flurry of motions and a few bursts of sparks. Then she giggled and slammed a plate back down and the shuddering, booming sound stopped. She threw some more connections and then the sound of the drive began to pulse more normally, only with a slight oscillation sound.

Calliope closed a connection and then banged the panel cover back down. "There, that should do it."

Eden took a deep breath. "I would very much prefer if you didn't go mucking around with my ship unless you. . . tell me you are going to."

Calliope looked surprised, blinked. "But I. . . oh, well. Sorry. I just started to work on the pressure problem and this seemed like it needed to be done."

"Did you. . . did you fix the pressure problem?" Eden said.

"Not entirely," Cally said. "I will need more extensive work. But it looks like two of your induction pumps were installed wrong, and so it is a wonder you have not just exploded. In some places this has been well-made, but in others they implemented the designs so poorly I am amazed they work at all. Sometimes they did not seem to know what they were doing at all and just made something up."

Eden laughed, looked down and felt herself a little flushed with chagrin. "My apologies for my harsh tone," she said. "I am not used to being around people who know what they are doing."

Cally blinked. "Did you say something harsh?"

Eden looked at Sally and laughed. Alex was lingering behind her, seemingly intimidated by the abundance of burly engineers down here. Eden shook her head. Already today was turning out to be quite interesting. "Well, you will want to get properly dressed and cleaned up. We'll be docking soon and you won't want to miss it."

"Miss what?" Cally said, wiping steam from her brow.

"The Princess of Texas," Eden said. "The biggest flying whorehouse in the world."

---

Cally simply could not believe what her eyes were seeing, and no matter how many times she blinked, the spectacle refused to change or dissolve like a mirage. It was simply, utterly impossible, and no matter how she tried to think about it, that remained. She stood at a porthole as they swept in close to the Princess of Texas, and simply gaped.

It was far too big. Even the immense warship she currently stood on was not so tall, with so many decks. The ship was a kind of baroque madness, with a high stern and sweeping gunwales. It had a dome, for the love of Pete. A dome. She could not even begin to imagine the kind of mechanisms that would generate enough lift to keep something so large in the air at all. Quick mental calculations told her there was not any way to pack enough gas in there - even under tremendous pressures - to create that kind of upward force.

"Is everything all right?" Alex said, and she shook off her reverie.

"Yes, I'm fine, just. . . it's so huge. I never expected it to be so immense."

"I never expected it to be so obscene," he said, sounding slightly awed. "I mean, I know it's a bordello, but my God."

Cally looked back at the ship, blinking for a moment, and then she stopped seeing it strictly in engineering terms and took in the lewd scenes of nymphs and satyrs painted on the hull in jeweled colors, the glassed-in promenades and the high, glimmering stained-glass windows. For a moment she had been so caught up in the structure of it that she had not grasped the immensely gaudy and yet gorgeous design of it. Everything about the ship was. . . voluptuous.

"Well, yes. I suppose I had not. . . really noticed that," she said, feeling foolish.

"I confess I am not entirely comfortable with this," he said. "This is a brothel."

"Yes! Rather exciting, isn't it?" she said. "I have never been in a brothel."

"I should certainly hope not, and neither have I." He folded his arms grumpily. "Already these pirates have taken too many liberties. I expect the atmosphere of a bordello will only further inflame their carnal impulses."

"Are you hoping the tiger woman will squeeze you again until you pop like a cork?" Cally said.

Alex spluttered. "That was entirely against my will. I certainly do not want it to be repeated."

"Oh you liar," she said. "You're always so worried about looking proper. Well, we're about to board a flying whorehouse in the company of pirates - I doubt anyone here will give a fig for how proper you are. The least you could do it try to have a good time."

"A good time? We've been kidnapped," he was almost puffing with indignation. "The fact that we were kidnapped from kidnappers in no wise diminishes that."

Cally rolled her eyes at him. "Are you just determined to be an old stuff about this?"

He drew himself up. "I swear to you, I will conduct myself in a proper fashion, and not lay hands upon any woman of low virtue in this flying palace of sin."

"Really," she said, flipping her hair back. "Well I am going to make no such promises."

She ignored his indignant noises as they swung in close and then the ramp extended and they were docked for the moment. Eden came and beckoned and they went aboard: Eden, Sally, Calliope, and Alex.

"Where is Zenobia?" Calliope asked, staring as they set foot on the wide promenade deck. People dressed in the finest fashions were, well, promenading everywhere. She wondered if any of the ladies were whores, then realized there was no real way to tell.

"The last time we were here, Antonina requested we not bring Zenobia's child on board again," Eden said. "It's all right, I want someone to mind the ship, and this is not Zena's sort of thing anyway."

"Why. . . why not the child?" Cally said, craning her neck as they stepped into a wide hall through gilded doors and into the open, lush interiors of the ship.

"Well, for one thing, a brothel is not really a place for a baby," Eden said. "For another, last time she crawled into the air ducts and slithered around in there for most of a day, screaming at people from the air vents and making a nuisance of herself. She ate three rats, bit two engineers, and shit in the filtration tank."

"Good God!" Cally covered her mouth, not sure if she wanted to scream or laugh.

"Yes, well," Eden said. "Little Belial takes after her mother, it would seem. Come on," she said. "I'll introduce you to the madam."

---

Eden was glad to be back aboard the Princess. It was always a place where it seemed like troubles and worries just fell away. She always understood the urge to just stay here, as so many people did, whether they paid handsomely for the privilege or put their bodies to work pleasing the ship's endless stream of customers. It was an attractive life, literally floating above the crude world below.

They passed through the halls and rubbed shoulders with well-dressed clients and half-dressed employees both male and female. There were fountains where naked girls adorned like nymphs contorted and posed, and even a pool where what looked very like a real mermaid reclined and sang to the accompaniment of a harp while slender boys lay in the shallow water and pleasured each other. All of it seemed a bit much for the Van Drakes, and Eden enjoyed seeing Cally stare while Alex stared and scoffed with increasing indignation.

They made their way through the gorgeous glassed-in rotunda of the greenhouse, and Eden was pleased to see that the scars of the battle she fought here in January were no longer to be seen. She had paid well to have the damage fixed, and to get back in Antonina's good graces. Any price was worth that.

They reached her high, ornate door and Eden bent down and pushed the switch on the little box beside it. "Antonina? It's Eden Kane. Can you spare me a bit of your time?"

They waited. Sally looked around, trying not to ogle the merchandise. Eden was pretty sure Quill was with them, but she had long ago learned to stop worrying about him - Quill always turned up when you needed him.

The tall doors clacked and then swung open. They all climbed the three steps and then into the high, sunlit rooms where the madam and owner of the Princess made her home. Cally and Alex looked around, and then Cally gasped as a black-winged figure dropped down from high above, feathers flaring as she caught herself in the air and touched down lightly as a scrap of down. The woman was swathed in black silks, pale and build like an ancient goddess carved from flawless marble. She tossed back her black ringlets of hair and folded her wings up behind her like a throne. She smiled.

Eden went and embraced her, loving her heady rose smell, and then she turned. "Calliope and Alexander Van Drake? Meet Antonina Faust."

Continued in Chapter 11

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