"Now, what is it that you two came here for?" Frank said. He looked at the brown slippers that gently held his socked feet.
"I need a reason to visit my big brother?" Jesse kicked his boots off with a few grunts.
"Of course you can, Jesse. I just can tell you're up to something, like the time you were thinking about robbing a Japanese mail airship."
"Well, it would have worked if you hadn't stopped me, Frank.”
Belle giggled in an actually ladylike manner much to Frank’s surprise. "Well, this is a Military Intelligence matter.”
Frank wondered if he should just say no to their scheme no matter what.
"Oh," Frank said. "You mean someone screwed up?"
"Yes. It was Colonel Ellie Jackson."
"That's one of Ole Stonewall's daughters," Frank said. "The one who joined army intelligence during the later part of the war. A colonel now?"
Belle nodded. Frank meant the CSA President Thomas Jonathan 'Stonewall' Jackson, former General of all the Confederate Armies and veteran of the war between the states. She told the general everything they knew about Colonel Jackson's encounter with Doctor Sakusa and a top secret airship of the Imperial Union. Belle pulled out her whiskey flask and poured some into her coffee.
"This airship of theirs might have some new kind of armor, you say." Frank nibbled at a cookie.
"Yes," Belle said. "But Ellie seems to have gotten into a sword duel with Doctor Sakusa and had her left hand cut off."
"Really?" Frank held out his cup and she poured.
"Yes, Frank," Jesse said. "Her daddy has her in the finest hospital in Virginia. Something about a new experimental prosthetic."
"Really?"
"Made of steel," Belle said. "But I'm also here to inform you that we think their fancy airship is damaged and need of repair. We suspect they'll try to head up to Canada. Maybe Toronto for repairs."
"Makes some sense," Frank said. "I can understand why you would come here. I'm having plenty of trouble with George Custer and his Godless band of jayhawkers running back and forth from Canada robbing our banks and airships. It's why the president wanted a general to command the Fort Detroit area and not just a colonel.
"Well, we plan to beat them there," Belle said. "Hire some local muscle to kill them or at least slow them down."
"Sounds like a plan," Frank said. "What do you want from me?"
"Well, Frank," Jesse said. "I hope you don't mind, but I told Belle about a little airship your wife has been working on."
"Oh, hell. That thing isn't ready for trial runs yet."
"I thought it worked." Jesse slipped his boots on.
"Well, it does, but it still is dangerous. It falls apart sometimes."
"We need it, Frank," Belle said. "Please?"
"Damn!" Frank said, but relented to the onslaught. "Come on. If you want to see it then let's go. My wife is out back in the building where we store it, along with all of her other crazy stuff."
Teddy brought Frank his boots.
#
Jesse followed behind Belle and Frank as his older brother led the way out the back of the house to a stone pathway with nearly six-foot tall bushes on both sides. The path led to a building made of steel rather than wood. Frank opened the door and walked inside to a scene of chaos. While there was room to move about, things of various known and unknown contraptions were laid about near the walls. Bicycles, wagons, drills, steam engines, windmills, wooden puppets, saws and no telling what the other odd things were.
"Ashton!" Frank shouted to his wife. "Could you put that hammer down, we have company who would love to speak with you."
"What?" Mrs. Ashton James was dressed in a dusty dress with a leather apron that an indoor slave in a Virginian plantation house--not to mention the wife of a senior officer in the CSA army--wouldn't wear. "Belle! Jesse!"
The petite blonde ran forward and gave both visitors loving hugs and cheek kisses. Jesse saw that Ashton’s hair had gotten whiter since he had last seen her.
She leaned back while gripping Jesse's arms and looked up at him. "Your mama would be so proud to see how her boy has grown so.”
"Oh, woman," Frank said. "Stop embarrassing him. He's a grown man."
Actually Jesse was laughing at the whole thing. He knew that it was all in jest for his boyhood had been a long time ago. Though he still missed his mother.
"I know." Ashton pinched Jesse's nose. "What are you up to?" She looked between Jesse and Belle.
"Is there a place we can sit down in all of this...wreckage?" Bell teased.
"My dear, Belle..." Ashton smiled and waved her hands around. "This is a garden of beautiful flowers and paintings of the mind." Jesse grinned and looked around. He didn’t quite see, but he said nothing.
"You're mind, my darling Ashton," Belle said with arms akimbo. "Not mine."
"Yes. Yes," Frank said. "There should be a place to sit over there."
"Unless she melted the seats down, for some odd reason." Belle gently took Ashton's arm.
Jesse looked at Frank and the two brothers shared a secret smile. They followed the two ladies to a small study with shelves bent under the weight of books on chemistry, technology, physics, and even an occult book or two. The four people seated themselves in chairs around a table.
"Should I assume you are still a spy?" Ashton asked bluntly.
"Yes," Belle giggled. "I'm still a spy in the service of our fine Godly country."
"I try to help some," Jesse said. "When the lady lets me."
"Oh, hush, Jesse," Belle teased. "You are an excellent shot. Why wouldn't any lady feel safe to have you around?"
"All right, you sinners," Ashton said. "Now what are you two up to?"
Belle retold the story of why they needed a fast airship--Ashton's airship.
"Yes," Ashton said. "She is just fine and will go faster than anything human beings have made. I don't know what our Martian friends have, but she's fast."
"How fast?" Jesse asked.
"The last time I clocked it was at 864 miles an hour." Ashton smiled like a proud mother. "Faster than the speed of sound."
"Damn!" Jesse yelled. "That's fast. When it stops will I still have hair on my head?"
Jesse crossed his arms. Oh lord. The stupid things I do for God, country, and family.
"Yes, Jesse. You'll be fine." Ashton got serious. "How soon do you need to go?"
"Yesterday," Jesse threw his arms up.
Ashton nodded. "Let's get to work."
Ashton filled the airship with the hydrogen that kept it in the air and then filled the fuel tank with her special fuel--a secret mixture of corn whiskey and other chemicals.
Frank told Teddy to get the male slaves to help him and Jesse pull the airship out of the building and tie the airship down.
"North to Toronto and back," Ashton said. "But you'll probably need to buy some more hydrogen. A place like Toronto should have more than one refueling station. Oh, and don't worry if you hear a boom."
"What?" Jesse said.
"It’s just my 'baby' bursting out of what I call the sound barrier," Ashton said. "The bull whip actually does the same thing, but in a smaller manner."
"Okay," Jesse said. God, country, and family!
"Thanks darling," Belle said. "You're a credit to the southern cause."
"The southern cause is over, Belle," Jesse said. "Our side won. We're all Americans again."
"Sure, Jesse, sure. There's plenty of fools who don't know the war's over and 'the north will rise again' crap that they spit."
"Ah, a few handfuls of lunatic bandits and abolitionists," Jesse said. "We'll have them fools burned out of the woods and mountains eventually. Along with them heathen Indians out West."
"Maybe."
Soon Belle and Jesse gave their goodbyes and were dashing through the air. The roar of the engines was ear-busting and Jesse wondered if he would ever be able to hear again once he got out of the noisy, shaking contraption invented by his crazy sister-in-law
.
CHAPTER TEN
Hired Gunman.
Jesse James opened the crooked door to Pete's Piss Tavern and held it for Belle Starr to walk in. She was now dressed in men's pants and shirt with a duster jacket while he didn't find her the quintessence of feminine beauty she still had something that he could describe. Jesse unbuttoned his duster jacket. His hand hung by his side. He was ready to reach in the pocket of his striped pants for his revolver if he had too.
Belle carried an old modified Colt cap and ball revolver that she favored. Neither wore holsters, but had their revolvers stuck into their pockets. Most people in the big Canadian cities weren't allowed to carry guns in public, unless they were the law or soldiers. Jesse quickly noticed that there was a lot of guns in plain site in the tavern. I guess the local law enforcement stays clear of this place.
Jesse followed Belle up to a dirty looking man seated at a table with a prostitute on his lap.
"Are you Jeremiah Klein?" Belle said.
The man peered up through dead grey eyes sunken into a rugged square face. "Mister, I've killed men for sayin' less than that.”
"I ain't no mister," Belle said. "I'm a woman and I'm looking to hire you to kill someone."
"I'm Jeremiah Klein then," Jeremiah said. "Get Abbie. I got business."
The ugly pock-faced prostitute hopped off Jeremiah's lap, but stayed near him. Jesse ignored the prostitute when she smiled at him and blinked an eye.
"She's even uglier than I am, Jeremiah." Abbie sneezed and scratched a sore under her ear.
"Shut up, Abbie." Jeremiah backhanded her across the cheek. She wiped snot from her face. "Or I'll knock out another tooth."
Abbie walked off holding her cheek, but not crying.
"Now, who do you want me to kill?"
"Izumo Hirohira," Belle said. "He's a low ranked samurai and a lieutenant in the Imperial Union Army and based in California. He is on is way here aboard a secret Imperial Union airship."
"He any good at killin', because I've never heard of him."
"He gunned down Carlos Dee and a couple of his men when they tried to rob him outside of Santa Barbara."
"That's too bad," Jeremiah said. "I was thinkin' about headin' down there to take out Carlos, myself."
"Hey!" shouted one of two men at another table. "Why don't you come over here at talk to us, pretty girl?"
"Yeah, we'll kill that Oriental!" the other man said. "You can pay us with that pretty body of yours."
As two men laughed Jesse shouted back at them. "You best leave her alone!"
"Maybe we were talking about you and not the ugly bitch." One of them pulled out a revolver.
Jesse shot both of them and never cocked his revolver.
"Yeehaw!" Jeremiah said. "Is that one of them new European guns that I've read about? You don't have to cock 'em back."
"They shoot pretty good," Jesse said. "Double-action revolvers is the latest thing out of Prussia."
"You must be a bunch of Confederate spies by the sound of your accents," Jeremiah said. "Fancy schools and I hear they pay you folks well."
"Do you have a problem with that?" Belle said.
"No, he the only one I get to kill?"
"Only if they get in your way," Belle said. "We'll handle the rest."
"Good for me," Jeremiah said. "Now, what do I get paid?"
"Eight thousand Confederate dollars," Belle said.
"Ten."
"Nine."
"Okay." Jeremiah laughed. "That's good money and better than stinkin' Union money. I like it. How long till they get here?"
"Not too long. They shouldn't be too far behind us."
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Keeping Up Appearances.
Hirohira followed Momiji away from the civilian/commercial airship port in Toronto. Hirohira wore his own Japanese clothes, but had his Colt Katana hidden in the jacket pocket. He also had a knife hidden inside a sleeve.
An Irish airman from the HMS Kaede was acting as a hired local to carry the bags for them.
There were a lot of other people walking to and from the port. He kept his eyes moving in a casual manner, since part of his job was as Momiji's bodyguard. It was a job he had been trained to do which meant he had to be constantly alert to every little thing going on. At the same time he could not be overly tense and paranoid. He had found that his regular meditation practice was helpful in these endeavors.
The people there--like many cities these days--were of all kinds. He saw a number of locals: white Canadians, Chinese, Koreans, and a number of Indios or mixed Indios. There were actually a surprising number of Japanese civilians around, so he didn't feel out of place.
"Won't a very large and obviously military airship that looks like it has just seen some action draw a lot of questions and create a lot of rumors?" Hirohira said.
"Hai," Momiji said. "Can't help it. We need to get it repaired and out of here."
"What happens when the Confederates start complaining about it to our government?"
"They won't. They have secrets they don't want leaking out either. You're used to desk duty back in Honolulu. Things work differently out here on the front line. Sorry. Don't mean to offend you. That's just the way it is."
"Thank you, Sakura-san," Hirohira said, as they approached a hotel with a sign saying, Custer's Hope. "Who's Custer?"
"Oh...some pro-union guerrilla leader," Momiji said. "A fool who doesn't know when to quit. He was a major in the union army during the Civil War. He is supposed to be very charismatic and heroic. He's still able to get a lot of kids to join his fight."
"Why do you know so much about that war?" Hirohira said.
"Local history around where I grew up," Momiji said. "You had to know it, especially with so many Union refugees coming in to hide from the Confederacy. First it was mainly the elderly, the women and children, but later on the soldiers came. The wounded, dying and the emotionally beaten."
"Oh." Hirohira wasn't sure what else to say.
They went inside the hotel and Momiji played the wealthy cattle baroness from California with her male escort/bodyguard. Hirohira remembered a lesson from spy school: it's easier to give half-truths than whole lies. Momiji signed for side-by-side rooms on the second floor. She paid the Irishman as if he was a stranger, though they all knew he would return to the Kaede after this. One of the bellboys picked up their bags and they followed after him. After Hirohira tipped the boy, he went to Momiji's room and knocked. Momiji let him in.
"Now what do we do, Doctor Sukusa?" Hirohira asked.
"Well, Hirohira-kun," Momiji sat on the bed and gestured to the wooden desk chair. "I believe we go to the theater tonight."
"Theater?"
"Yes." Momiji smiled and glanced upwards. "I believe it is a performance of the Shakespeare play Hamlet. Hamlet is to be played by a visiting Confederate actor named John Wilkes Booth. He's supposed to be quite a crowd gatherer."
"Oh."
"Other than that, Lieutenant," Momiji said. "We wait. Actually I plan to call the lobby and ask them to bring up a bathtub for me. How about you?"
"Yes, I think I'll do the same thing," Hirohira said.
#
A slim elegant woman with a heart-shaped face stepped out of a dress shop. For several moments she stood on the sidewalk. Her name was Mrs. Seraphine Julie Le Trosne and she casually watched a Japanese lady and her escort enter Custer's Hope, a chic hotel for the wealthy. She herself was staying there with her husband the French Ambassador. In truth she was a spy for the French government and she was wondering why they were here, and why a local thug named Jeremiah Klein was standing around with a man and a woman she recognized as the Confederate spies: Belle Starr and Jesse James.
"And I thought things were going to be so boring this month," Seraphine said to herself. "Who is that oriental lady? I must find out."
Seraphine opened her umbrella and walked down the street away from the dress shop and hotel. She hitched up her skirt and slip to hop over a bi
g hole instead of going around it.
Jeannette might know about this. But first I must deal with that terrible bore who has been following me all day.
Seraphine made several turns as her journey brought her to Chinatown and a section where a person might find exotic herbs or illegal drugs for a good price. She stopped in the street and waited for others to go by. She acted as if she was unsure of where to go. Her heart pounded in her chest, which it did when she was about to make a kill. She wondered why her vulva always felt warm and tingly under such situations, but filed away the thought for later. She turned quickly to her right and down an alley.
Oh, poor little me. I'm just a delicate lady all by herself walking into places she shouldn't. Foolish girl!
Seraphine stopped in her tracks and turned on the balls of her feet like a leopard. Her skirt twirled; the soles of her shoes made a crackling sound as they ground against the dirt and sawdust. The man who had been following her was comically frozen in his next movements. She held her umbrella in front of her like any lady in fear of a rapist. Her left hand flipped the switch that released the handle and the .36 four-shot short-barreled revolver hidden there.
Two bullets hit the man in the chest. One slammed through his sternum and into his lower heart chamber. The second bullet pierced the fourth rib on his right side and punctured a lung. He gaped at the French woman as he fell to his knees. Seraphine smiled at him with a wolf's grin and put a third bullet into his forehead just for the fun of it.
Seraphine giggled. She reloaded her gun and tucked it into its hiding spot. She walked into the street that she had come from and went up to the nearest shop. It sold noodles, but owner Jeannette Chung sold many other things. One of the Chinese men behind the counter recognized her and waved her to the rear. She walked into a large room overloaded with cages of live animals…and a few human beings. Seraphine opened one of the two doors on the other side of the room and found a double-barreled shotgun aimed at her face.
"Why Jeannette darling, I thought we were dear friends?" Seraphine said.
The Mighty Airship Kaede. (The Mighty Airships of Earth. Book 1) Page 5