Turnkey (The Gaslight Volumes of Will Pocket Book 1) (36 page)

“I've missed
this,” Kitt griped, pulling himself up.

“Stop complaining
and hold onto something solid!” Dolly shouted.

“Like
what?
”

“I don't know.
Just—ah!”

And then she fell
down.

“Yeah,” Kitt said.
“Really missed this.”

The young lady
working the telescope swung its skinnier end from one side of the cabin to the
other.

“Excuse me,” I
inquired. “Young lady with the scope. Miss...”

“Quill.”

“Miss Quill.”

“Just Quill.”

“Fair enough. If I
could pose a question—“

“On second
thought,” the bright-eyed girl interjected, “you can call me Miss Quill.”

“Sure.”

“You don't hear
that sort of manners these days.”

“You don't?”

“Well, not in the
circles I travel in.”

“Can't imagine
why,” Kitt said after another great shake spun his eyes.

Dolly got up and
fell down again.

“My question!” I
shouted over the noise.

“Go ahead,” Quill
replied. “You don't have to shout over the noise.”

“Ah.”

“Your question?”

“Yes. Well, as it
is, I couldn't help wondering—”

“Pocket!” Kitt
snapped.

“Just say it!”
Dolly snapped.

“What the hell is
going on?!?” I, in all exasperation, snapped.

Quill slid away
from the behemoth peeking glass and cheerfully tossed her scarf over her
shoulder.

“Is that all you
wanted, sensei? Didn't Gren say anything?”

“He was too busy
arguing with Jack.”

“Typical.” She
began rummaging through a split-wooden cabinet that was quite wisely bolted to
the wall.

“So it would seem.
So anyway, the situation at hand?”

“Right!” Quill
replied with a smile and a nod. “We're being fired upon!”

Upon that
revelation, the wider and blunter end of the telescope spun quickly as the
Lucidia
dipped to the left, the heavy brass catching me right behind the neck,
beneath the ears.

Things became very
quiet and very grey.

“You're quite a
man for naps, Pocket.”

“Best way to
dream.”

“So you're for
them?”

“Of course.”

“Even those
uninvited ones? Knocks on the back of the head? What sort of dreams do those
bring about?”

“Heh. Now you're
getting to the real dirt. I'll let you in on a little secret, barkeep. Before
the knocks on the head, my dreams were as powerful as wet paper. Mushy pulp,
all of them. Couldn't produce a decent story if you wrote them down a thousand
upon a thousand times.”

“So it's worth the
bumps and knots...”

“Is that a
question, Alan, or an agreement?”

“Pssh…when did
this story become about me? That's sloppy tale-telling, bard. Keep
your...eh...”

“Narrative focus?”

“That'll do. Yes.”

“I'll try to iron
myself against distraction and sentiment. Where were we?”

“Dreams, Pocket.
Come now, get with it. You're out solid on the cabin floor, and the damn boat
in the sky is under attack. What dream came to you next?”

“A very simple
one.”

A great dull pain
and a small grey line of light. A tunnel. A familiar, round cat, orange and
white, was walking away from me. I was lying on my chest and I asked him where
he'd like me to follow. I spoke, but my words had no sound. As the cat became
horizon, I was awakened.

“The boy can sleep
through anything,” someone said.

The air tasted
fresher. I made my eyes work.

I was back
topside, lying with a pillow under my skull. Clouds zipped and zagged. There
was a great calming moment there, sitting in the clouds. Completely serene.

And then a
cannonball was fired into the ship.

With a crack.

And a boom.

And an angry
shout.

Shouted from an
angry man who was fool enough to follow the orange cat down the lighted grey.

“Get up,” Gren
said, taking my arm. “And stop screaming. I think we have enough noise
already.”

“Very nice to be
back,” I griped.

I could feel the
very nails in the boards beneath me rumble in their holes as shot after shot
collided into the ship.

Despite my
startled yell, the severity of the situation had not yet quite seeped into my
head. Still in a dreamer's haze, I spun my eyes over the scene, taking in what
I could before I woke up enough to feel panicked and afraid.

In those few
moments of sleepy calm, I watched the people around me spin and move like some
sort of farcical ballet. Gren was at my side, barking obscenities and waving
his fists at the firing ship in the distance. I squinted my eyes at it. It was
a large ship, sails puffed out like the chest of an overconfident prizefighter,
spitting ammunition at the golden
Lucidia.
I cocked my head left and
found that Quill was sitting on an overturned bucket, hunched over some sort of
wooden-framed device that was cradled in her arms. Over the sound of wind and
smell of burnt gunpowder, I heard B jogging across the deck, her boots
plud-pludding in rhythm. She was shouting instructions. Still sleepy, I took a
step back and rested myself on a crate. B came into view, marching across and
shouting back over her shoulder. With a rusty, squeaking sound, Kitt appeared
behind her, struggling to wheel out an iron cannon. On the other end of the
ship, Jack was leaning halfway over the railing. He shouted for help and Gren
came to assistance, grabbing the boiler monkey by his ankles and sliding him
ever further over the edge. More sounds. Metal on metal. A sounding clang,
clang, clang. Jack was, I realized, mashing a section of the side's metal paneling
with a piece of thick pipe. The spring-hinges, I heard Jack shout, then
successfully popped open, allowing the paneling to unfold, expand, and provide
additional cover and shielding from the onslaught. Gren then lost his grip on
Jack's ankles, and the poor soul fell miles through the clouds to a very messy
death.

I'm just kidding.
Had to make sure you were still paying attention.

Dolly was also
there, shadowing Kitt and holding a large wooden rod that was wrapped in old
rags at one end. B produced a torch.

Wait.

Kitt and Dolly
began complaining and crying, respectively, as the lady sailor demanded they
load, aim, and fire the cannon. What ensued was fumbling, fiddling, improper
packing with the clothed pole, gunpowder in the clockwork girl's face, more
crying, poor aiming, and finally a sloppy firing of the ship's finest frying
pan—not sure how that got involved—over the side.

I think I laughed.
We could've been shot dead out of the sky at any moment, and I'm fairly certain
I laughed.

There was some more
arguing. B handed the torch to Kitt, who waved it around like a butterfly net,
and the next thing I knew, his voice was in my ear.

“Pocket? Pocket!”

“Mmm?”

“You're on fire.”

That woke me up. I
snapped back to life, kicking my now-flaming pant cuff into a nearby bucket of
cold...something.

“Heh, heh. Is this
the infamous 'flammable intensity' of Will Pocket that you spoke of? Your epic
spark?”

“Hilarious. But
that ‘epic spark’ came from the epic Kitt epically waving that damn torch
around. And for the record, Alan, it burned like hell.”

I frowned at the
singed remains of my left pant cuff.

“What was that,
Gren?”

“We're still under
attack,” Gren repeated. “Pay attention when people are talking.”

I started to say
something sharp, sarcastic, and cutting, but my voice was rudely interrupted by
a barrage of buckshot whizzing above my head. I instinctively hit the deck.

“Get up, Pocket,”
Gren said. “They can’t hit a decent target from that range.”

I looked at the
attacking vessel and noticed it was flying the Union Jack from its rafters. I
had heard that such was a popular tactic amongst pirates and smugglers, raise
the British flag and lull unsuspecting merchant ships into their snare. A
coward’s ploy, I thought to myself. And as the
Lucidia
was decked to the
brim with trinkets and valuables, I decided I should probably have a few words
with the crew to make sure everything was in order.

“It'd being
handled,” Jack said to me.

“What?!?” I
not-so-calmly replied, the panic finally setting in.

“It's being handled.”

“Handled?!?
How?!?
”

“Mister Pocket,” B
chimed in, stamping her foot. “If you will kindly take a breath and a step
back, you will see that we are more than capable of addressing the situation.”

“Are you...sure?”
Dolly nervously asked.

“Quill is already calculating
a proper retaliation to...you know...those asses trying to knock us out of the
sky.”

Those, uh, asses,
as the young lady so eloquently described our adversaries, then took the
present moment to ram their ship directly into ours.

“Asses,” B said,
retrieving her hat.

“So they would
seem,” I mumbled. I felt the Doll tug on my sleeve.

“This is bad,
isn't it?” she whispered to me.

I tried to smile,
but I only got half there.

“No, no, I'm, uh,
sure we're fine. This crew is experienced. I'm sure they're...uh...competent.”

“Is that the most
reassuring you're going to get?”

“I think so.” I
exhaled and shook some sense into my head. “I mean, no. No, Dolly! It's not. I
mean, look where we are. Prettiest steamship I've ever seen, golden and shiny
and powerful. This is the age of progress, after all. Of ingenuity! I'm sure
these...these...these airborne machinists, these neo-nautical tacticians are
poised and ready to cram their steam-driven heels into the foolish carcass of
those who oppose them!”

“You...you do?”

“Sure!” I shouted,
jogging down the deck. “Miss Quill! Lady Navigator! What is our plan of
counterattack?”

“Hang on,” the
girl said to me, hunched over that small, wooden frame. “I've got to move the
big beads over to the small beads.”

My eyebrows nearly
squeezed my pupils out of their sockets.

“Be...beads?”

“Mmm-hmm!” she
cheerfully nodded, proudly presenting her abacus to me. An abacus. The
navigator, the
only
navigator operating on this vessel, this
over-decorated tin can, was using an abacus to calculate at what angle her
shipmates should best fire at to ensure that we were not quickly destroyed.

I took this in as
well as could be expected.

“An
abacus?!?
”
I screamed, making Quill jump in surprise. “Those maniacs are ramming
themselves into your ship, and you're playing with a bloody
abacus?!?
”

“It works pretty—“

“No! No! You know
what? No!” I mashed my fist hard into a wall. Everyone stopped and watched with
great interest as Mister Pocket finally, for lack of a better term, lost it.

“No! I've had it!”
I shouted, my face heating up. “This is just...absurd! It's pathetic! You lot
are a pack of complete loonies! This is eighteen-hundred-and-eighty-eight! This
is the bloody modern age! And you people are throwing junk into your steam
furnace and moving along by an
abacus?!?
Where's the pinnacle of
technology?!? Where's the golden, gyroscopic, skyfaring, motor-and-magnet
navigational gadgetry?!?”

Quill blinked like
a child at me. “Um...this is what I use. The frame's imported cherry wood.”

“Look!” B fired back
at me. “If you aren't satisfied with how we handle ourselves here, you are more
than welcome to try hitching a lift with our attackers.”

“No, I'm fine,” I
said as the other ship began to pull away from their point of collision. “I
apologize. It's just, you know, messy business, this.”

“We are
aware
,”
B said with fire, “and we are
tending
to the situation. Is that all
right with you?”

“Proceed.”

“Thank you!” B
began to grind her knuckles into her sides. “Quill! What's our status?”

“Hold on,” the
other lady responded. “You two have gone and made me lose count.”

“Lovely,” I
muttered, crossing my arms. B gave me a warning sneer.

Before long the
attacking vessel had pulled back and, thanks to the
Lucidia's
copious
armor-plating, they didn't leave so much as a dent. They were, however,
straightening up for a second blow to the side. I noticed that their bow was
reinforced with some sort of metal-structured tip. It might take them a few
hits, but chances were they'd get through our armor sooner or later.

But why, I asked
myself. Why resort to such a long-winded attack? Why did they stop firing
directly upon us when it obvious to both sides that they had us outmanned,
outgunned, and in my opinion, out-calculated? I didn't get it. Would the crash
attract too much attention? No, that couldn't be it. We were now far enough
outside of the city that if we went down, we'd hit open grassland...I think.
Was there something we had aboard that they wanted to preserve? That didn't
make any greater sense. Sky pirates of this age are notoriously unscrupulous
and would not think twice about downing a ship for the convenience of
collecting plunder amongst the wreckage and corpses.

Then what...

“Pocket!” Kitt
hissed, grabbing my arm and pulling me aside.

“What? What is
it?” I replied.

“We're in
trouble.”

“No kidding.”

“No, listen to me.
That ship—“

“The pirates.”

“Pirates?!? Is
that what you think is going on?”

“Well...”

“Didn't you see
the Union Jack?”

“Well...yeah...but...pirates,
they...I mean, I heard they'll sometimes raise—“

“Just think for a
second. What if they're not pirates?”

“Then...it's a
British Naval ship...right?”

“Aaaaand...”

“And what?”

“What could a
British Naval ship
possibly
want with this ship, a ship that you and I
and
she
are on?”

I looked back over
my shoulder at the Doll. She was clasping her hands in front of her, those
mechanical eyes watching the events unfold all around. I looked at the
attacking ship, at the British flag.

“Dear God,” I
said.

“Exactly,” Kitt
said back.

Swallowing hard, I
bumbled over myself and ran nervously to B and Quill.

“The Captain!” I
stuttered. “I need to see him! At once!”

“Pocket,” Miss B
said. “I told you. We have the situation—“

“Where is he?!?” I
demanded, my tone cold and even.

B stopped and for
a moment I think I saw her blush.

“In his cabin,”
she quietly said. “Over that way.”

I nodded, half in
appreciation, half in apology.

“Kitt,” I said to
my colleague. “Come on. It's time I finally met this elusive captain.”

“What?” Quill
said. “I'm confused. Didn't you already...”

I didn't stick
around to hear the rest. Kitt and I jogged across the ship until we reached a
pair of stained, polished, dark red doors accented with shining gold door
knobs.

We tugged at them.
No luck. They were locked.

“Captain, sir!” I
yelled, banging my fist against the wood until my fingers were nearly purple.
“We have a bit of a problem out here!”

“We need you!”
Kitt joined in, pounding next to me.

“I'm busy!”
shouted a voice from inside.

“Busy?!?” I
yelled. “You're going to be busy being dead if you don't get out here!”

“Is that a threat
on my life?” the voice yelled to me.

“No!
Well...yes...but the threat doesn't come from us!”

“Your ship's
losing a very serious fight!” Kitt chimed in.

“Did you talk to
my lady?” the captain shouted back.

“Yes,” Kitt said.
“She said it was under control.”

“Then what's the
big, bloody problem?”

I couldn't believe
this bloke. “Look,” I shouted, “with all due respect to yourself and your
hospitable crew—“

“
Most
hospitable!”
Kitt added.

“Yes, most
hospitable! But with respect, sir, I think you're in a bad way, a
real
bad
way, and if you don't reconsider your tactics, and
soon,
you're going to
end up surrendering.”

“I never
surrender!” the captain shouted.

“Then you'll end
up dead!” Kitt responded.

“Bah!” the unseen
man mocked. “I don't have time to die, gentlemen.”

“Oh really?” I
said, trying my best to hold back my annoyance. “And what exactly
do
you
have time to do?”

There was a
momentary pause, and the red, polished doors flung open. Shuffling back, Kitt
and I stood gape-mouthed. And then, the captain of the steamship
Lucidia
walked
onto the bridge. He wore an elaborate, flowing coat of shiny leather dyed blood
red, brimming with buckles and trim. Shining, skull-shaped cufflinks held his
large sleeves.

“Skull-shaped?”

“Hang on, Alan.”

He wore a long,
stately sword at his side, a bold saber encrusted with jewels down its hilt.

“Jewels?”

“Shhh!”

The lapels of his
garment, outstanding as it seems, were even lined with small metal plates, sewn
right to the leather! And most peculiar of all, underneath the whole thing, he
wore...well, of all things, he wore...the shirt and collar of a priest.

“What?!? Now, hold
on, Pocket. Metal lapels? A priest's collar? Come now.”

“I swear to you.
Not a detail embellished.”

“Swear, do you?”

“On my life. This
was the man that I met.”

“Hmmm...”

“What? What's that
look for?”

“Pocket...what
kind of man was this captain?”

“What do you mean
by that?”

“Well, it's a
merchant ship, right? Awfully gaudy dress for—“