The Pirate (Blood and Destiny Book 2), page 1
THE PIRATE
BOOK TWO OF THE BLOOD AND DESTINY SERIES
BY E. C. JARVIS
Copyright © E.C. Jarvis 2016
All Rights Reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced
in any form, including photocopying, recording,
or other electronic or mechanical methods – except
in the case of brief quotations embodied
in articles or reviews – without written
permission by the author.
First edition
www.ecjarvis.com
For Dave and Bonnie.
Thanks also to those who helped with their invaluable opinions along the road:
Dan C. Boutwell
Addison Smith
Rich
Ian Jordan
Anton Almgren
Kat Hutson
This is a work of adult Steampunk Fantasy. Possible triggers are present within the book including but not limited to sex, murder, torture, and violence.
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHAPTER ONE
Captain Larissa Markus stood at the bow of the pirate airship, chewing on her lower lip. She watched the distance between her ship and the steam train’s smoke plume ahead reduce by degrees. She wasn’t sure what the bigger challenge would be—to board the train, or to convince the reticent Captain William Holt that he should come back aboard the airship with her. Either way it was a challenge, and challenge enough to keep her mind from falling into despair over the death of the Professor. His body still lay in her cabin, cold and empty, spirit abandoned.
Larissa blinked away the wetness that formed in her eyes, unable or unwilling to give into grief now that she had a new purpose.
She glared at the dot of the train across the snowy flat landscape miles ahead, as if giving it a deathly stare might somehow bring it to a stop.
“You want me to land the ship up the track a ways to get them to stop, or are you planning on doing some crazy jump on the train as it’s going along at a thousand miles per hour stunt?” the engineer-turned-pilot, Cid Mendle, called out to her from the wheel of the ship.
“A thousand miles per hour?” Larissa asked, turning to face him with one eyebrow raised. “You seem to have developed a talent for the dramatic, Cid.”
“You know what I mean, which is it to be?”
Which indeed.
Larissa poked her chin out, mulling over the options. The train had ten carriages; if she started at one end and worked her way through, it would take a considerable amount of time to find Holt. That was presuming he sat in plain sight and not hidden away. After that, she had no idea how long it would take to talk him into getting off the train. The airship might not be able to keep up with the speed of the steam train, especially if the train driver and fireman spotted the pirate ship following them. They’d likely expect an attack and double their speed. As much as it irked her to admit, getting the train to stop seemed the more practical option, if a little cavalier for her liking.
“Land the ship on the tracks, please, Cid. Can you calculate how fast they’re going and how much distance they’re likely to cover after they pull the breaks? I’d rather not destroy a second airship and leave us stranded in the snowy wilderness with a train full of angry passengers.”
Cid scanned the terrain for a moment, his eyes darting left and right as he appeared mull over complex mathematical calculations.
“There,” he said, pointing to a spot far ahead on the landscape where the train track curved around a large copse of snow-covered trees. “They’ll slow for the bend. If we land up the track a mile away, when they come out they’ll spot us and pull the break. They should stop before they hit.”
“Should?”
“Just remember, you’re the one who wants to chase down a bloody train to get to that knife-wielding lunatic. My calculations are sound, provided they pull the break when I assume they will. I have no control over that portion of the plan.”
“Hmm. Think you can drop me off on the train before you go land it over there?”
“What? Why would you want to do that? Have you lost your bloody senses, girl?”
“Captain,” she barked at him.
“Apologies. Have you lost your bloody senses, Captain?”
“Not at all. I shall enter the train and make sure they pull the break. You and the others can look after the train driver while I find Holt. Let’s move it, Mr Mendle, before we run out of track.”
As the airship closed the distance with speed, the crewmen Goodson, Grubbs, and Zeb shovelled coal in the engine room as fast as they could. Larissa latched a pair of pistols onto her belt and arranged a collection of knives alongside the pistols. The intention was not to fight or kill; she hoped a menacing appearance might be enough to convince the driver to pull the brake, just in case seeing the pirate ship hovering on the track ahead wasn’t convincing enough.
The airship approached the last two carriages of the train. Larissa flung a rope over the side of the rail and climbed down, ignoring the nagging voice at the back of her brain that warned against such reckless abandon. As she worked her way along the rope, hand over hand, legs gripping on for dear life, a breeze swung her wide and she clung on desperately.
The smoke from the engine ahead chugged across her face and she quickly slipped a few feet further down to escape the clogging soot. As the roof of the carriages came back into view below, she realized she was not low enough. The airship raced too quickly across the path of the train to make for the simple, neat drop she’d imagined. She scooted a few feet further down the rope, almost dropping off completely when her feet lost the end of it, leaving her dangling by her arms. It was too late, now; her untrained arm muscles screamed out against the strain. There was no way she could pull herself back up.
As another gust of wind swung her wide like a pendulum, she let go and crashed into the roof of the last carriage. The momentum sent her rolling to the side and her arms flailed to find a grip. She finally came to a stop, just as her legs fell off the opposite side of the black carriage roof. Larissa looked up through a head full of curly blond hair that whipped across her face in the wind, and saw the airship moving off ahead, flying over the trees in a straight line to head off the train.
She let out a shaky breath, and with a grunt pulled herself up onto the carriage, crouching down as the speed of the train threatened to send her off balance if she dared to stand any taller.
“You’d better make this worth my while, Holt,” she muttered through gritted teeth as she reached the edge of the first carriage. She looked down, wondering if it might be a better idea to go through the passenger cars rather than navigate across the top. A bespectacled elderly gentleman in a top hat glared at her through the rear window of the carriage, brandishing his cane in front of his face as a threat. As far down the carriage as Larissa could see, there appeared to be a combination of angry, scared, and mortally terrified faces, all looking over their seats at her. They’d obviously seen the airship and had probably witnessed her theatrical descent onto their train.
The roof may be the safer route after all.
Larissa straightened slightly, rocked back on her heels, and leapt across the gap onto the next carriage, slipping quite ungracefully onto her backside.
After scrabbling to her feet and battling along the next nine carriages, she’d become adept at making the jump. All that remained between her and the engine was the coal car.
Thick, hot plumes of smoke raced across just above her head. She looked toward where the train approached the bend around the large copse of trees and felt the speed drop off, just as Cid had predicted. She lined up to make the leap across to the coal car, not looking forward to the thought of getting covered head to toe in black muck.
“I hope for both our sakes you have a very good reason for this.”
Larissa stumbled as she spun around to see Holt on the roof behind her, crouching to avoid the smoke plume.
“I…uuh…I do.”
The train moved through the bend in the tracks as Larissa struggled to find the appropriate words to say in place of I’m doing this crazy stunt to get your attention and convince you to come back to the airship so we can go off and complete your mission together, because I think I’m falling in love with you. Instead, she opened and closed her mouth a few times and the
n resorted to chewing on her tongue.
“Shit.”
Holt filled the silence for her as the train completed the bend. Larissa turned to see the pirate airship descending from the sky in the distance ahead. Holt leapt forwards, snaking deftly across the coals on the coal car. Larissa scrambled to her feet and jumped to follow him, smacking face-first into the pile of coals, which left a great smear of black across her arms and she presumed all over her face. She clambered along and swung down to the train engine to find that Holt had shoved the terrified train driver and his colleagues into a corner. Holt grabbed the brake handle, and the wheels of the steam train screeched in protest, lurching everyone and everything not tied down forwards.
Larissa braced herself against the doorway. The airship hovered ahead, the point of the curve touching the tracks. She would have doubtlessly commended Cid on his excellent landing if she weren’t busy regretting her rash course of action. There was little else anyone could do but wait, and hope, as the train slowed. Holt continued his sharp grip on the brake, the wheels screamed in protest, and the distance to the airship closed at an alarming rate. Larissa gritted her teeth and squeezed her knees together as she struggled to maintain bladder control.
Finally, with one great clunk, the entire train ground to a halt, bumping gently into the hull of the airship.
Holt sunk his head onto his arm as he still gripped the brake.
“Look, we don’t want any trouble,” the train driver began, his voice trembling. “Just take what you want and then let us get back to work. You don’t need to kill anyone, all right?”
Larissa looked at Holt, who eyed her from just above his elbow.
“Well, Miss Markus…” Holt began, his deep voice hoarse from the smoke inhalation. “What is it you want?”
Larissa felt the familiar sensation of blood rushing to the edge of the skin across her shoulders, neck, and face as she blushed, an affliction she still could not hide.
“Just you,” she replied sheepishly, wondering if perhaps she needed to take some time to mentally process everything that had led her to this point, lest she cause some complete disaster with her next crazy plan.
“You couldn’t have just met me at the station?” Holt asked as he stood upright. Larissa felt the burning blush intensify.
“On reflection, that may have been a wiser course of action.”
Holt glanced at the men in the cab who stood dumbstruck by the exchange, and then he marched through the doorway, dropping down into the snow-covered grass. He offered his hand up to Larissa, who accepted his help to get down. Along the train, several people had hopped out of their carriages and craned their necks to see what was going on.
“If you people are quite finished holding us up, we have a schedule to keep to,” the train driver called down, waving his arm at the airship blocking his path.
“My apologies, gentlemen,” Larissa called back to them, and she and Holt climbed back aboard the pirate ship.
CHAPTER TWO
Colonel Gabriel Kerrigan stood beside the helm of the RDS Falcon, the Republic of Daltonia’s second-finest Sky Force airship, with his arms folded across his chest. The ship moved through the sky with such speed that Kerrigan’s short black hair appeared permanently restyled, slickly sticking up and back like a porcupine.
On the top deck, men set about their duties with rigid stoicism, their training so ingrained that the Officers barely needed to give commands. Their gleaming red and black uniforms were all pressed and smart, as any fine military unit should expect to appear.
Kerrigan looked to his own small team of men who had claimed a spot on deck beside him, cleaning their weapons. Weapons that—Kerrigan knew—needed no extra cleaning, but they felt the same awkward uselessness he felt himself. A handful of army men infiltrating a Sky Force unit, a full ship compliment of sixty-two men to boot—it was a situation neither party was too happy about. With travel across land being so slow and unreliable at this time of year, he’d had very little option.
“You know the RDS Skyhawk is berthed in the East?” the ship’s Commander, Captain Isac Barton, said as he joined Kerrigan, his arms folded in the same manner as the two men stood side-by-side.
“The President asked me to take care of it personally and immediately,” Kerrigan said.
He was getting tired of repeating himself and was loathe to have to call in a favour from Barton, but the Falcon was the only warship within the Capital that had been ready to fly on such short notice.
“Bloody pirates. We’re supposed to be training, getting ready to go to war, not gallivanting cross country to pick off a couple of scum chuggers,” Barton said as he eyed a young Private carrying a cannon ball across the deck. “You there, get that off the deck and down with the others,” Barton barked, then turned back to Kerrigan. “What have these particular pirates done to earn the President’s ire?”
“You know I can’t discuss it. Just rest assured, it’ll be a smooth assignment. They won’t put up much of a fight. Even if they have a full contingent on board, I doubt they’ll try their luck against a fully loaded warship.”
“If they do, I’ll blast the buggers out of the sky.”
“No. The President wants the occupants taken alive.”
“Very well, as you say. Though don’t forget I’m in command here.”
“Of course,” Kerrigan replied grimly. “How long did you say until we reach their last known location?”
“At this speed, it’ll take two days. Perhaps a day and a half if I push the men.”
“A day and a half it is,” Kerrigan said. “A good training exercise, don’t you think?” The corner of his lip curled up.
Barton grunted his form of a laugh and then set to barking commands to his men.
. . .
Larissa stood beside Holt on the deck of the ship as it ascended back into the sky. The train slowly chugged along the track below, trying to return to speed. Larissa opened her mouth to speak, only to be interrupted by Friar Narry, who had appeared behind them.
“I’m sorry to interrupt, but I must insist that the body is dealt with accordingly.”
“Body?” Holt asked.
“The Professor,” Larissa answered, her voice cracking. She didn’t want to be reminded of it. She’d just enacted a daring train-hold-up in some psychotic attempt to avoid dealing with his death.
“We abandoned a good many dead bodies back in Meridina,” Narry said, his tone bordering on disapproval. “The Gods may forgive us for that, considering the situation, but we cannot expect forgiveness for such callous abandonment of the gentlemen in our care. His body should be burned, respectfully, so that his soul may pass on.”
“I don’t believe in your Gods and I don’t have time to mourn the dead,” Holt stated. He passed a sullen glare at Larissa.
“We will make time for a cremation, Friar,” Larissa said, laying her hand on Narry’s shoulder. The elderly man nodded and walked away.
“So that is why you came to get me, because he died,” Holt said once Narry was out of earshot.
“I…didn’t mean it to seem that way. You didn’t give me a chance to talk to you, or to think things over. You just rushed off. So if it seems like you’re my second choice, that’s your own fault.”
“What exactly are we talking about here?”
“I don’t know.” She sighed. “Too many things all at once, I think.” Larissa smoothed her hands down her skirt. Suddenly, her head felt woozy, exhaustion threatening to claim victory over her body. How many hours had passed since she’d slept? Her hand brushed against a piece of paper in her pocket, and her mind snapped into focus again. She pulled the paper out and held it before her, reading aloud to Holt.
“Doctor Orother,
I was very encouraged by your latest missive on the progress of our mutual friend, Professor Watts. It has been frustrating for me these past few years to know that the gentleman was in possession of such powerful knowledge and yet he was foolish enough to request permission to build it as a private enterprise, with the short-sighted intention of harnessing its capabilities for power production. I am still dealing with the destruction he brought upon us by secretly building that thing in The Hub. Now that you have the knowledge, I wish to know how quickly you can build a new machine with the adjustments we discussed. The Eptorans are growing restless and our shores are threatened by war. I must have a working weapon ready post haste, though we have still not located the source of Anthonium. Please continue to update me on your progress at regular intervals.
