Steamed (17 page)

“What about you, Captain?” Matthew Mowen asked, giving first her, then me, an appraising glance.

“I’ll see that she comes to no harm,” I said, giving him a nod.

“I will follow shortly,” she said, shooting me an annoyed look. “I just wish to make sure that the revolutionaries don’t attempt to harm the ship. Then we will retreat, as well, and await the officials that are sure to come.”

Mowen stood his ground for the count of twenty, but eventually he succumbed to Octavia’s demands, and both men exited the cargo hold by the entrance we had just used.

“You lie very well,” Hallie said, her gaze resting thoughtfully on Octavia. “I hadn’t expected that of you.”

A faint flush of pink rose in Octavia’s cheeks. “I prefer to speak only the truth, but in this situation, I felt a lie was justified in order to save my crew members’ lives.”

“So no one else in the crew is a member of this group?” I asked as she crawled over to the next crate.

“No, of course not!” she whispered back. “I don’t suppose it would do any good for me to request, yet again, that you and Miss Norris return to your hiding spot?”

“None whatsoever,” I said cheerfully. She turned her head to glare at me and caught me ogling her ass.

“Mr. Fletcher!”

“Jack.”

“Might I remind you that I am the captain of this airship?” she said, sitting abruptly on her heels.

Behind me, Hallie giggled.

“I’m a man. You’re a woman, a damned attractive woman. Your ass was right there, demanding I give it the consideration due it. I couldn’t help it that consideration came in the form of an ogle.”

“My derriere has never demanded anything from anyone, not that you were looking at it in the first place, as the previously unwarranted discussion about bustles should have proven,” she said in that huffy tone that I was beginning to love. “Now, am I going to be able to proceed without you subjecting my person to inappropriate scrutiny?”

I thought about it for a moment. “I don’t think so, no. I’ll try to rein it back if you’re seriously offended, but as I said, I’m a man. I can’t help but admire the body of a woman who I . . . well, admire. And bustle or not, if you’re going to waggle your booty in front of me, I’m going to notice it.”

She gestured in front of her. “Very well. Since you are unable to control your manful lusts, you may precede me.”

“Manful lusts. I like that term. If Jack’s manful lusts get to be too much for you, Octavia, just whisper the phrase ‘sexual harassment’ in his ear, and he’ll stop. Probably.”

I winked at Octavia as I crept past her, moving as stealthily as I could down the far wall, running at a right angle to the wall that had been folded back for unloading. I was just about to ask Octavia what we were looking for when a muffled explosion sounded. We all froze.

“That wasn’t on the ship,” I said, not feeling any vibration in the metal floor.

“No. It came from the aerodrome.” Octavia clutched my shoulder as she peered around me, her face tight with worry.

“Are the revolutionaries blowing up the buildings?” Hallie asked, poking her head above mine to look. The workers who had been unloading Octavia’s cargo ran outside, shouting to one another. In the distance, we could hear other voices, people calling out questions, and, above that, a high, droning sound.

Octavia froze for a second, her head tipped as she listened intently.

“That sounds like . . .” I stopped and dug through my memory. “It sounds like the show some Bedouins put on when I was in Saudi Arabia. What’s it called? Ululation?”

“Not Bedouins,” Octavia said, leaping to her feet. Hallie and I followed suit. “Moghuls!”

“What on earth are moguls doing here?” Hallie asked.

“Not the Donald Trump sort of mogul, Hal,” I said. “The kind from the Moghul empire.”

Gunshots sounded above the screaming, but they were hollow-sounding gunshots, not the sharp bark I was used to. We ran as a group to the edge of the opened wall, and stared out at pandemonium.

Below us, the field of the aerodrome lay, grass and dirt spread out before us like a smooth carpet, edged on one side by small one-story buildings that were probably offices or terminals of some sort. Two other airships were parked on the field—one close to us, the other visible in one of three hangars that sat on the far side of the field.

“It’s Akbar,” Octavia said, clutching my arm. “The imperator’s son. Only he would be so bold as to attack a Black Hand raid.”

“Your raid is being raided?” I asked, wondering if she saw the irony in that.

She nodded, her face pinched with worry. Evidently she didn’t.

Dust rose thick and heavy in the air as madness consumed the people outside. Fifteen or so of the folks who had been loading up big wagons with the cargo had taken cover behind the wagons, and were shooting at the attackers. The Moghuls—I assumed Octavia was correct in identifying them—rode horses across the field in a wave that encircled both the hangar and the airship itself, their strange call rising high over the shouts and sounds of gunfire from the revolutionaries.

The Moghuls evidently had rifles, of a similar type to the handguns in that they made the same dull shooting sound, followed by a blast of reddish orange light.

“Akbar, huh?” I squinted through the dust, amazed she could see enough of the attackers to identify them. Their horses appeared to be wearing some sort of ornate leather and metal armor.

“Yes. That’s him, there, on the black horse.” She pointed as one of the galloping horses leaped over a wagon and spun around, charging the revolutionaries who had been hiding behind it. The man on the horse wore little armor, an odd choice, I thought, given the guns being fired toward him. He was dressed in some sort of a long tunic that reached to his knees, split up the sides so he could ride, with what looked like a yellow sweatshirt beneath it. His pants, also yellow, were tucked into ornately decorated leather boots, and he wore matching leather bracers on his wrists, the same type I’d seen on a friend who was heavily into archery. He had no bow, but did carry a rifle, and had a sword strapped to his belt. On his head he wore a pair of dark goggles, and a white turban, the end of which had been wrapped around the lower half of his face, no doubt to keep the dust out.

“Goggles,” I told Octavia.

“Eh?” she asked, looking confused.

I pointed at the man. “See? He knows how to do steampunk.
He
has goggles.”

She gave me a look that said she thought I was a few gigs short of a terabyte. While I watched, the Moghul whipped the rifle upward and began shooting at the revolutionaries, crying something at them as the dirt erupted at their feet. They scrambled backward, a few of them shooting at him, but he simply charged them with his horse. They turned tail and headed straight for us.

“Don’t worry—I’ll protect you!” I yelled, filled with the knowledge that I had to keep Octavia and Hallie safe from this latest threat.

“What?” Octavia said, her eyes round. “No—”

“Get back,” I shouted, shoving her toward Hallie. “Both of you—go hide!”

“Mr. Fletcher, I really must object to such high-handed—”

“You can yell at me about my manners later. Hold her, Hallie!” I bellowed, grabbing up a crowbar one of the revolutionaries had left lying behind. I didn’t wait to see if Hallie did as I demanded—she was a smart woman. I knew she wouldn’t insist on being in the thick of a battle when she was unarmed. I just prayed that Octavia would show the same sort of good sense.

I scrambled up on a crate, leaped across it to another one that stood in the center of the opened wall, and narrowed my eyes on the Moghul prince who Octavia had said was known for his ruthlessness. The revolutionaries wouldn’t hurt her, since she was obviously one of them, and I trusted her to keep Hallie safe from them. But the Moghul was another matter.

He charged toward us as the revolutionaries streamed into the hold. I felt, at that moment, in great need of a personal battle cry, something I could yell as I leaped off the box and challenged the Moghul prince, something that would summarize, in a few succinct words, both my personal attitude and beliefs, something dashing and inspiring, along the lines of the war cries that actors screamed so dramatically in period war movies. In the fraction of a second it took before the warlord reached me, I considered, and rejected, the motto of my alma mater, various Tolkien cries that were stirring, but meaningless in this context, and finally the motto of the US Army.

Akbar headed straight for me, his rifle spitting out splats of light on either side. I took a deep breath, raised my crowbar, and yelled in my best Bruce Willis impersonation, “Yippie ki-yay, motherfucker!” as I flung myself onto him.

I hit him with enough force that we both went over the back end of his horse, my arms and legs cartwheeling wildly as we fell. He was partly on the bottom as we struck the wooden ramp leading into the hold, his head making a satisfying thump on the ground as we hit.

He snarled something at me in a language I didn’t understand, shoving me off him as he scrambled to retrieve the rifle I’d knocked out of his hands.

“No, you don’t!” I yelled, tackling him. His head hit the ground again, leaving him dazed for a moment. I jerked him over onto his back, raising the crowbar in my hand.

From the hold, I could hear feminine voices. The gunfire had stopped, but not the screaming. I heard Octavia calling my name, and was warmed by the concern she obviously felt, but didn’t want to admit.

The dazed man beneath me coughed, his eyes fluttering behind the dark green lenses of the goggles. He must have seen the heavy crowbar in my hand directly over his head, because he froze. I stared down at him for a few seconds, a war waging inside me. Part of me wanted to bash his brains in for daring to attack Octavia’s ship, and possibly threatening her well-being. But I had always prided myself as having some sort of honor, so instead, I jumped to my feet, hauling him up with me. “I could crack your head open as easily as I could an egg,” I told him, shaking the crowbar at him. “But I’m going to let you go so long as you leave Octavia’s ship alone. Do you understand me? You are to leave her ship alone, or so help me, I’ll make you sorry you were ever born!”

“Jack! What are you doing? Let me pass, please!” Octavia’s voice was annoyed.

“It’s all right,” I called back, without taking my eyes off my captive. “Tell the revolutionaries to stand down.”

“To what?” Octavia asked.

“Stop shooting at him. I’ve got the situation under control.”

Akbar the Moghul’s eyes widened as I picked up his rifle.

“Go on,” I said, nodding toward his horse. “Take your band of thieves and get the hell out of here.”

Around and behind us, people emerged from behind crates, looking with disbelief as I waved the crowbar at him, more or less pushing him back toward his horse, which had stopped at the bottom of the ramp.

“For the love of the heavens!” Octavia yelled, bursting between two revolutionaries. “Jack, stop!”

“It’s all right, he’s not going to steal anything from you,” I called to her. She rushed up, and I half turned my head toward her, my eyes narrowed on Akbar. “Sorry I can’t comfort you, but this bastard looks like the type to carry a knife in his boot.”

“He does,” she said, taking the rifle from me.

Both Akbar and I glanced at her in surprise.

She blushed. “That is . . . I’ve heard he does. The newspapers are full of tales of his atrocities.”

“Well, he’s not going to be performing any atrocities here,” I growled, shoving him backward another couple of steps with the crowbar. “You heard me—get your buddies, and get the hell out of here.”

I thought for a moment that he was going to fight, and I braced myself for an attack, but instead he just made me a little bow, and said in a voice heavy with accent, “I will allow you to speak to me with such insolence for the mercy you have shown me, but do not expect such again.”

I slapped the crowbar against my hand in a threatening way. “Just remember that Octavia’s ship isn’t ripe for your picking.”

He said nothing, just leaped on his horse and, calling out something, rode off, his half-dozen followers on his heels.

Octavia turned to me, her eyes wide as she watched me clutch my hand and do a little dance of pain. “You stood up to Akbar the ruthless.”

“Dammit, I think I broke my hand with that damned crowbar,” I said, stopping the pain dance long enough to gingerly feel my palm. “Please remind me if I ever want to slap a crowbar on my hand that it hurts like hell. And yes, I did stand up to him, but someone had to. It was clear things would have turned into a bloodbath otherwise.”

She just looked at me as Hallie, making a noise of distress, took my hand and prodded at it.

“It doesn’t look broken to me,” Hallie said, giving it back to me.

“You challenged Akbar just because you didn’t want anyone hurt?” Octavia asked me, her gaze steady on mine.

“Well, no, not just because of that. I didn’t want your cargo stolen. Er . . . stolen by the wrong people,” I said, gesturing with a nod toward the revolutionaries, who stood clustered around us.

“I can’t believe you would endanger yourself for people you don’t know,” Octavia said, a frown suddenly pulling her brows together.

“I know you,” I said, nudging her with my arm.

“But you could have been killed,” she said slowly, little flecks of amber and black glittering in her eyes. Once again, I wanted badly to kiss her, but I figured she wouldn’t appreciate it in front of everyone.

“That could happen at any time,” I said, shrugging, and wishing we were alone. Clearly she wanted to express her gratitude to me for saving her cargo, and I was more than willing to have her do so, especially if that gratitude took a tangible form. I cleared my throat, ordered my groin to stop thinking about being alone with her, and arranged my expression into one of modesty. “I was happy to do it.”