Without further ado, here is the next installment of our tale!
Steam on the Horizon
Chapter 1, Part 5
Whenever
Sir Smothers eventually went to his final reward, deserved or not,
his empire would pass into the hands of his two sons: Richard and
Albert. Richard had become his own legend in the airship business
before turning his skillful attention to the railroad industry and
had been steadily accumulating a fortune to rival the old man's and
with the elder's blessing and assistance. In stark contrast, Albert
had been a magnificent, chaotic failure in just about every endeavor
he attempted. After both Oxford and Cambridge had made it known that
despite his prodigious family wealth, Albert was no longer welcome to
grace their ancient walls, Sir Cornelius had forced his young son
into the business, to the detriment of all parties involved, the
elder included. Time and time again, the old man had dragged his
wastrel son from the whorehouses and opium dens and put the fool in
command of an airship, and it had been a lavishly catastrophic
failure each attempt. Too many ships to count had crashed or eaten up
all their profits under the younger son's inept command before he was
given the Horizon as a
last resort; she was considered a black sheep anyway and it was
marginally easier to blame problems on the airship rather than the
one who commanded her.
Roberts
had been offered a generous salary as the Horizon's
first mate and the position came with a gentleman's agreement that he
keep things afloat and functional and manage Albert's failures as
best he could. It was no small task: after two years, the Horizon
had only escaped crashing, bursting into flames, or running out of
coal in the middle of nowhere more times than Roberts cared to think.
That the airship and crew were still alive and functional was largely
because of her first mate's tactful hand and realization that keeping
the captain's rum stores well-stocked meant that the man would stay
holed up in his cabin out of the way, leaving Roberts to run
everything.
It
was at this point, standing with his back to the patch of flooring
containing one newly dead captain, that Roberts realized that his
unspoken contract had most likely included a stipulation about
keeping the wayward Smothers son from killing himself due to sheer
stupidity. The mangled corpse several feet away was a physical
representation of Roberts' career as an airship officer, and unless
he managed some skillful damage control, he had no more chances of
finding a position on board another airship than Captain Smothers had
of rising to life again. Smothers elder was generous with success and
ruthless with failure, and right now Jenkins was giving his first
mate the kind of look that translates in every language as, Nice
knowing you. Good luck, you poor sod.
Roberts
troubled musings were interrupted by Jenkins. “Ship won't last when
the old man gets a hold of her,” he said gruffly, reaching out to
awkwardly pat the hull in an oddly affectionate gesture. “Sorry,
old girl, but he'll have you for firewood, I'd be bound.” Roberts'
mind flew to a rumor he had heard years ago – the only daughter of
Sir Smothers had died in childbirth barely a year after her wedding,
and the doctor who had attended her birth had quickly left England,
some say with knives and clubs following after.
Angrily,
Roberts growled, “It's not the Horizon's
fault she was commanded by a fool.” However, his attention was
already being directed above deck where the sound of thumping feet
and yelling men was growing rapidly. Now secure in a berth, the
wounded Horizon was
being attended to and evidence was being evaluated. Something
official was being shouted, most likely courtesy of a squadron of Her
Royal Majesty's Military Airmen who patrolled the wharf in search of
lawlessness to arrest. Boiler explosions were common enough that
sabotage would be easy to conceal, and such an accident automatically
earned an official inquiry, hence the uniforms currently crawling all
over the Horizon. But
Roberts guessed that the soldiers wouldn't prod too far: the Horizon
was well-known as a tricky vessel and the younger Smothers as a
complete disgrace to the captain's hat he wore. Few men would suspect
anything of foul play. But Sir Smothers would be far less easy to
placate.
Briefly
Roberts wondered if it would help his case that he was not on board
the ship at the time of the accident or if Smothers senior would only
be that more furious that Roberts wasn't around to keep his son from
blowing the whole damned thing apart. “What was the captain doing
down here in the boiler room anyway?” he demanded of the two airmen
facing him.
“He
was, um, discussing something with Silverman,” Brown ventured
timidly. “Um, well, I guess arguing was a better word for it.”
The
boy flushed and Roberts put a hand on his shoulder. “It's okay,
lad,” he rumbled. “Whatever reason he was down here, he's dead
all the same.” Actually, Roberts had a fairly good premonition of
what the topic of discussion had been, and the aftermath was
currently lying in pieces across the hull. Captain Smothers had
insisted on purchasing a new model of boiler a month ago, despite the
fact that the Horizon's
old boiler was perfectly serviceable. The new one was supposed to
reduce their weight load by a hundred pounds and increase their fuel
efficiency by 5%. Roberts had hated the blasted thing at first sight;
the seams looked dangerously weak and while it was certainly lighter
than the one it had replaced, he would have welcomed the extra
hundred pounds if it meant another layer of protection against an
explosion. But the captain had insisted and had paid an exorbitant
price for it. Even worse, he had taken an uncharacteristic interest
in the boiler's operation and was forever tinkering with it in a way
that set everyone's teeth on edge. Both Jenkins and Silverman were
constantly griping about the captain being underfoot in the engine
room, and his endless fiddling with the new device in attempts to
coax more efficiency out of it had been the source of more than one
heated argument.
And
just to Roberts' cursed luck, they were in home port, the bastion of
the Smothers' empire not a quarter-mile from where the crippled
airship lay drunkenly in the berth, waiting for the ministrations of
the dock workers. Smothers senior would hear the bad news quickly; in
fact, word was probably winging its way to his plush, opulent office
right now.
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