The Nephele Ship: The Trilogy Collection (A Steampunk Adventure) Read online

  The Nephele Ship

  The Trilogy Collection

  By Luke Shephard

  © 2014

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ~Volume One: The Frozen Workshop~

  When a bone breaks, it's a sort of sickening feeling. The pain is almost immediate, but there is a split second before it hits where you become aware that your bone has just been compromised. A sort of base, instinctual reaction to this fact rushes through your mind, and just as you are about to say, "Fuck!" the pain begins. It's not a lot of fun.

  The huge man pulled his fist back, aiming, I supposed, to break more of my ribs. I gritted my teeth and ducked under his wide swing, feeling the air rip behind his fist, and stepped behind him. He tried to turn to face me, but a strategically placed kick to the back of his supporting knee stopped his rotation. He teetered, and I used that momentary hesitation to introduce the knuckles of my left hand to the bottom of his jaw. I stepped back, wincing.

  “Listen, sir, all I want are my things back. I won't-“

  He recovered from my uppercut too quickly, and lowered his shoulders, as if to charge and tackle me. He cracked his neck. "You won't what? Walk away alive, I think!" he growled.

  He started to come forward, but I stepped at the same time, and just as his first foot would hit the floor, I swept it to one side, and he stumbled wildly into the throng of people who had suddenly gathered. Great. That's all I wanted, people watching while I had my ears boxed.

  He caught his balance on a table, and when he turned around again, I rather dishearteningly noticed he had brought his friend, Broken Wine Bottle. He thrust and slashed haphazardly, as near to cutting himself or one of the other drinkers as he was to cutting me.

  "Watch it! Careful now!" I called. A big man like him gets sloppier as he gets angrier, but I might have been pushing my luck a little with that. "It's just a piece of a map, anyway! What would a simpleton like you want with it?"

  He answered by stomping down on my foot, trapping me in place as he swung the bottle forward again.

  Think fast. I twisted my torso and caught his wrist with one hand, forcing it upward above my head, and used the turn in my hips to force my other hand, now tightly closed, up into his diaphragm. He coughed, and then froze for a second.

  A very large man falling to the floor of a pub makes quite a loud noise. Loud enough that when this man's head came to rest on the hardwood, everyone hushed suddenly. I straightened my collar, brushed off my cuff, and stooped down to the defeated combatant. I reached into his pocket, and took out a tiny aluminum cylinder, and slid it into my jacket. Before I stood up, I whispered to the man.

  "Please don't try to steal my things again. I'm asking politely, as one gentleman to another. I went through eight storage facilities to find this thing."

  I stood up and cleared my throat. The shocked pub owner looked at me like I was insane. "You just punched out Jason Gregor. You got some mighty nerve on you."

  I left a couple Lyrea on the bar. "One for my drink, one for his," I said, and picked up my hat. "I'll be going now."

  I pushed open the door, slid out into the cobbled street. As soon as the door shut behind me, I coughed, and spat up a little blood, leaning heavily on the wall. The sky was a little hazy, and the grey mist was beginning to sweep in over the hills nearby.

  "Big tough boxing man, now, are we?" said a silky voice, and a blue-gloved hand alit on my shoulder. "Keep that up and you'll be the most respected fighter in this whole town, Strallahan."

  I chuckled, immediately regretted chuckling. Victoria, the crew's doctor, never missed an opportunity to give me hell. She continued, straightening her glasses. A little spark ignited in the corner of one lens. "Two ribs broken, one fractured. Minor tissue bruising, some lacerations. And you bit your tongue," she added. The spark disappeared, and she shook her head.

  "At least I got the map piece back. Give me some credit," I said as we climbed into the waiting carriage.

  Last night, my crew and I had pulled into port to get supplies and just feel solid ground again. The closest port city that allowed private vessels was Old Capitol Toreny, which, while called “Old Capitol,” was indeed still one of the biggest and most economically and technologically advanced cities on the continent. I had an appointment with an “antiques” dealer in town to pick up a bit of cash fencing some portraits we had collected, and Victoria had a hookup here where she could get more medical supplies as well, so it was with good fortune on our shoulders that we pulled the Nephele into port and debarked.

  At the common house that evening, Liza, our head engineer, and I were having a drink. The sort of musty air in the place, permeated with a sting of oil and warm metal, felt rather at home for her, but I wasn’t terribly comfortable there. I loosened my collar a bit.

  Liza leaned over, her cup leaning dangerously to one side in her hand, and chuckled. “Getting tae warm fer ye, cap’n?” she said, and ribbed me with her elbow. She was a wonderful engineer, bright as a brass button, but she wasn’t one for drinking too much. “Ye c’n always step out if th’ atmosphere’s not tae yer likin. More o’ th’ drink fer me!” she laughed. “I’ll save yer seat fer ye, unless someone more han’some takes it first!”

  I needed to do a bit of record-keeping anyway, and prying eyes at a barstool were not the most welcome of things. Drunk as she might get, though, Liza can take care of herself, I thought, and nodded.

  “All right then, but you fellows take care of my engineer, you hear?” I called over my shoulder at the other patrons. A low cheer came from a few of the drinkers. I stood up, brushed myself off, and shouldered my bag. “Bring her home by eleven, and no―“

  I was cut a bit short as I turned directly into a larger fellow behind me. I stumbled back a bit, and he reached out to steady me, catching me by the shoulder and the sleeve. “Terribly sorry, good man,” I said to him, and as he stuck his hands into his pockets, he shrugged.

  “No harm done, none at all.” He kept walking, past a table in the back where seven or eight individuals dressed significantly too well for this place sat, discussing what appeared to be old books scattered here and there. It took me until a few hours ago to figure out that it was during that moment that he lifted the damn map piece, and until a few minutes ago to retrieve it from his meaty fingers. A good thief he was, but a smart man he was not. If he had realized what the item in the little tin tube he lifted was, he’d have gone directly to who I now know was the Brass Eyes in the back at that table and left with so much money in his pockets that he’d have had to buy a second set of trousers for it.

  Liza, nursing a headache, was waiting for Victoria and me on the prow of the Nephele. “Cap’n, did ye get th―“

  “Yes, Liza, I did.”

  “An did ye knock that swaggered cu―“

  “Yes, Liza, I did.”

  “A’ss my cap’n! “ She beamed, and rubbed her forehead with her fingers. “Now, if ye could just do somethin’ about this headache.”

  *****

  I laid out the
map in its entirety under a piece of glass on the table in my quarters. We’d originally found the map folded up in a diary recovered from an old museum, long since abandoned due to the creeping ice shelf.

  “I regret my dear creations left in the cold, and I regret my inaction. More so, though, I regret the actions I took which brought this all about. All I have now are the memories of my beloved creations frozen there in the waste, and I with nothing but this map of my facilities.”

  The journal was penned in a hand far too elegant to be a factory worker, but far too old to be an artist. A little exploring into the locations we could still read on the torn map (as if he had hurriedly grabbed for something he could take with him, and a scrap of this map remained tacked to the wall) led us to the knowledge that the writer was an inventor, one Copernicus Wrightworth, who was renowned as a doll-maker before the flash-freeze, and that the locations marked on the map were the positions of his warehouses. The map lacked the piece, however, that would show us the location of his actual workshop, where we were certain that the old inventor’s creations still lay, waiting to be discovered.

  Dale, our navigator, had been able to find maps that correlated to the one we’d found, and through a process of elimination, we visited the recently-thawed warehouses and storage complexes marked until we found the one from which he fled, and by that same process, the post-board on which still hung the yellowed, brittle fragment of the map.

  And now here we were, the map complete.

  All that was left was to go to the workshop and to collect the treasures. We could have Liza try to reverse-engineer them and then sell the patents, or we could sell the items outright, or we could do any number of other things with them. That would be the easy bit.

  The difficult bit, of course, was getting to the main workshop. Wrightworth’s main was much farther west than the storage houses, far into land which once was a great city but which now was covered in the treacherous ice that crept over half the world so suddenly two hundred-odd years ago. They say that the ice is starting to recede, to melt now, but there is still quite a bit of frozen waste.

  Fortunately, we had the Nephele. She was garish and ate coal like Liza eats toffee, but she did her job well (as long as she was well-taken-care-of, of course). She was one of the few airships that could go where she pleased (regulations on air travel restricted bigger vessels, but the Nephele was just a sailor and not really a ‘ship’), and it was due to her good graces that we could get any work done at all.

  I stretched my legs, leaned back on the couch as Victoria put on her gloves again, this time long, thin leather ones. “I’m going to just put you under for a few minutes, captain. I will mend your ribs in no time at all,” I remember her saying. She opened a little phial labeled “Trihalomethane.” It smelled sweet.

  Some hours later, as I sat in the cabin running my fingers over the stitches in my side, I heard a knock on the door. Dale’s voice came through, sort of questioningly.

  “Captain, are you in there? You have a caller here, one mister Phillips.”

  Phillips? I don’t know any Phillips. “Send him in,” I said, straightening up a bit and moving my cup off the table.

  A well-dressed man of about forty years strode into the room, confidently. His boots clicked on the wooden floor, polished to a shine that would put any soldier’s to shame. He wore a brocaded jacket of rich velvet over a fitted pair of trousers and a waistcoat that glistened with chains and buttons. In his hand he carried an elaborate cane, the head carved intricately from what looked like ebony into the shape of a large feline of prey. It, too, sparkled in the lamplight.

  “Tiger, tiger, burning bright,” I muttered, the remnants of some nursery-rhyme left in my head. I stood up to meet him. “Mister Phillips, was it? Pleased to make your acquaintance. My name is―“

  “Captain Austin Strallahan, of the vessel Nephele. Self-styled treasure hunter and explorer. I know all about you, captain.” He produced a card, and I took it from his fingers. As I read it, he announced himself.

  “Jericho Phillips, Esquire. Antiques and curiosities dealer.” He reached out to shake my hand, but I was scrutinizing the card. Not a bit of dust or smudge… this man must have been so clean, he squeaked. I finally took his hand. When it came away, my hand held the faint scent of gardenias.

  “Mister Phillips,” I began, motioning for him to sit at the table, “what can I do for you? If you are looking to purchase some of our recoveries, we have several available for sale. What is your fancy?” Truthfully, most of the time, either Victoria or Liza took care of selling off the things we found and did not want or need.

  He laced his fingers together, leaned back in the chair. “Captain, I am looking for a specific piece from you. I’d like to purchase your map.”

  I hesitated. “Which map?” I asked. “We have several archaic maps of regions from before the freeze―“

  He took out a tobacco box, and began to fill the bowl of a pipe he produced with it. He set the box down on the table. “Your most recent find, I think. It is of great personal interest to myself and my colleagues, and as such I am willing to offer you a great deal of money for it.” He fiddled with the box for a moment before pulling a match out of a compartment, sliding the box over a few inches, and lighting his pipe.

  Someone knew we had a map. Was it that Jason fellow, whom I introduced to the floorboards? No, he was of a lesser sort than this man. Who else knew? The crew had not mentioned conversations with anyone. Had Liza said something about it while drunk?

  “I’m sorry, I don’t follow you. We haven’t got any new acquisitions recently.” I watched him shift the tobacco box again, as though he had a nervous tick about it. He seemed to be pushing the box around the glass pane on the table in a sort of up-over-down-over pattern, waiting a couple of seconds between each movement.

  “I am willing to offer eight thousand Lyrea for this map.” He calmly followed the movement of the box with his eyes, never looking up at me as he spoke. “I am sure you will find that to be a compelling offer.”

  Eight thousand…? Who on earth had eight thousand Lyrea to spend on a map? And why would this map be worth so much to them, unless…

  He seemed finished playing with his box, and picked it up, sliding it back into his pocket. I shook my head. “You seem to be mistaken, sir. I think our business here is done. Good day, Mister Phillips.” I stood and offered him my hand again. Rather amiably, and without any more protest, he took it as he stood.

  “I hope you find everything you are looking for, though I hope we find it first,” he said. It was at that moment that I realized what he had been doing.

  “Before you go, though,” I said, still gripping his hand firmly, “Might I try some of your tobacco? It looked remarkably high-quality…” He began to protest, but I pushed him back a little, to keep him unsteady, and reached into his coat pocket. My fingers closed around the box just as he brought his cane up, pushing me away with it. I grinned.

  “You scoundrel! Return my tobacco box this instant, you scalawag!” he said, his face becoming red. He brandished his cane at me.

  I just smiled. “You and I both know, Mister Phillips, that I am in no unclear terms averse to thieves taking my things. You did not think I would notice what you took, however, did you?”

  He gritted his teeth. “This is an outrage, Captain, an outrage! Give me back my tobacco box this instant, or I’ll―“

  “You’ll what, cry to the constabulary? Even if you had half a case against us, we could be out of port in minutes. They would never catch us.” I idly tossed the box from one hand to the other. It was heavy, and a metallic rattle sounded as I caught it. “Get off my ship, ‘Mister Phillips,’ whomever you are. You are a liar and a thief, and my crew does not take lightly to either. Dale! Show this gentleman off the deck, please.” I heard Dale’s footsteps approach as Phillips positively shook with anger.

  His knuckles became white as he gripped his cane. “You’ve not seen the last of me, you lou
se! All of Antimony's Eye will be upon you before you know otherwise!” he said, as Dale took him by his arm and led him out of the cabin.

  Antimony's Eyes. The “Explorers’ Guild.” Ostensibly an archaeological organization, they consisted of engineers, inventors, and geniuses, right next to roughnecks, ruffians, and contract killers. Many museums had articles with their name on a plaque nearby, “donated” to the museum or collection (for usually disgusting amounts of money). Extortionists, thieves, and grave robbers they were, but somehow they still had the backing of many influential and rich museum groups. They were bad news.

  I sighed. Looking out the cabin window, I saw Phillips on the dock. He was walking away, but it looked like he was laughing. I turned away, and rang the wheel room. “Prepare for departure soon. We might have some trouble if we stay too long here,” I called into the pipes.

  I listened for the “Roger tha’, Cap’n!” before settling down on the table to find out just what this little box did. I pried off the top of the box with a blade.

  Inside the box, dozens of tiny gears and springs rotated and tensed silently. It was a self-winding system, wound by the movement of the man’s jacket as he walked. Clever. I set a pair of magnifying lenses over my eyes and scrutinized it further: The inside of the box had a rotating cylinder that seemed to be coated in a phosphorescent paint, and there was a tiny spark igniter inside as well. The bottom of the box was a smoked glass, nearly opaque from the outside but transparent from the inside, and the cylinder rotated whenever a tiny switch was pressed on the side of the box. As it rotated, it caused the igniter to flash just a bit, and the cylinder would pick up the reflection of whatever was below the glass. The last bit of the device was what looked like a miniscule baby’s rattle: a glass bulb with a grain of silicon in it, attached to the phosphorescent tube with two copper wires.