The Airship Aurelia (The Aurelian Archives)

by Courtney Grace Powers

  “You asked.”

  He was a step outta the door when she called again, “Gideon?” His boots squeaked on the floor as he jerked to an unwillin' stop. “Do you think…everyone thinks she's pretty?”

  He was pretty sure she had been about to say somethin' other than everyone, and he had a feelin' he knew what. He impatiently sighed, considerin'. “Sure, probably.”

  “Yeah. That's what I figured.”

  He heard her bed squeak loudly, and even though he wanted nothin' more than to run for it while he had the chance, looked back. She was kneelin' on the bed, tryin' to make up her mattress with a sheet. Every time she managed to get one'a the fitted corners around the mattress, another she'd already tucked in place popped off. He watched her crawl in circles for probably a full minute before tearin' himself away from the door and crouchin' to hold the corners in place for her.

  “So. You got any brothers or sisters?” Po asked, puffin' a strand'a white outta her eyes as she secured the last sheet corner and then pulled a colorful patchwork quilt up onto her lap from the floor.

  “Shouldn't you ought’a know that by now?”

  “Right, well, I guess I meant…did you? On Panteda?”

  Gideon rubbed his scarred eyebrow, starin' at one small patch on the quilt, a red one with white stripes, like a carnival tent. “No. Just cousins.”

  “How many?”

  “Two. Enoch and Pheobe.”

  “How about pets?”

  When he didn't say anythin', she leaned up from smoothin' out the quilt, saw his look, and spread her hands innocently. “You don't gotta look so fierce. I'm just tryin' to be friendly. You don't talk much, is all. Tell me about somethin' you wanna,” she insisted as she started packin' her clothes into the long, flat dresser at the foot'a her bed. “Like…tell me about Handlin'. How does it work?”

  “Work?”

  “Yeah, like how do you start to be a Handler?”

  “You don't just start to be one. You gotta be trained by a mentor for a long time, and then forge your own gun, before you really count for anythin'.”

  “So how long have you been…you know, countin' for somethin'?”

  He hesitated. “About eight years.”

  “So you must be pretty good by now, huh? How many people have you shot?”

  “I—” He broke off as Po started snickerin', and felt his face go warm. “Wait, are you kiddin'?”

  “Of course I'm kiddin'!” Mufflin' her laughter in her hands, she took a good look at his face and paused. Her eyes widened over her fingertips. “It's a lot, isn't it?”

  There was an uneasy pause, and then they burst into laughter. Gideon thought they might be laughin' at different things…because Po probably wouldn't be laughin' if she knew he'd been serious.

  The laughter threw him off for a second, elsewise he probably would've heard it sooner. Someone movin' out in the engine room. That wouldn't'a been outta place in itself, only he knew the sound'a someone tryin' to be stealthy, knew what to listen for. It wasn't footsteps he heard beneath Po's fit'a giggles—it was the quiet chaffin'a fabric, the rubbin'a clothes together.

  “Quiet!” he snapped, and Po choked mid-laugh. He flipped his revolver up outta his holster and waved for her to stay put in the same smooth motion, backin' up to the open door to peer around it slowly.

  There were too many shapes for an intruder to hide behind, blocks'a metal and tall, cylindrical fans. He tipped his head and listened. Nothin'. He imagined a sneakin' silhouette frozen somewhere out there around a corner, waitin' for him and Po to start talkin' again before it dared to move.

  Gideon turned to look at Po to find her freckled face not inches from his, peerin' around the corner with him. He leaped back, his heel nickin' the edge’a the screen, and tripped out into the engine room.

  “You about gave me a bleedin' heart attack!” he growled.

  “What were you doin'?” Po asked, starin' at his gun.

  “I heard somethin'. Someone.”

  “The engine is always makin' funny sounds, Gideon.”

  “Not like this.”

  “What was it like?”

  “Like…like rustlin' clothes.”

  She immediately pointed up and left. “The rotator belt.”

  Gideon hesitated. He knew what he'd heard. And there was that feelin' he'd had since comin' aboard, a feelin' like a spider inchin' slowly up his back, makin' it impossible for him to settle. He opened his mouth to speak and left it open as Po swung away from him, hoppin' onto the second rung of a ladder set in the wall.

  “Comon',” she invited, “I'll show you. It's just the belt.”

  He uneasily rolled his fingers over the grip’a his gun. “You shouldn’t be scuttlin’ around unarmed, Po Girl.”

  “Gideon,” Po laughed, tossin' her long braid, “there ain't nothin' out there! Don't be so nervy. Besides—” Suddenly, she was scamperin’ up the ladder, her hands hardly seemin' to touch the rungs at all. “—this is my place. Ain't no one can touch me here!”

  VIII

  Mighty Big Engine Rats

  It wasn't like Reece had imagined as a Ten, being a captain, having a crew and a ship. It wasn't as fun, for one. And for another, it was better.

  During the day, he worked the helm in four hour shifts—four hours on, one hour off—and at night, in three hour increments, with either Nivy or Gideon covering for him while he slept. He started every day with setting the autopilot, and walking with Nivy down to the galley for breakfast with the crew. Depending on whose turn it was to make breakfast, the food itself ranged from toothsome to barely palatable, but it was the experience Reece loved: all of them sitting around the long oak table, loud and laughing, bickering over the last biscuit or apple. Or, in Gideon and Scarlet's case, over any other number of things.

  Scarlet was warmer to everyone else, if still a little detached. Of course, she could have pretended they were all invisible, and she still would have succeeded in making Hayden as jittery as a first-time flyer at the helm of a Chimera. Every day without fail, he spilled his tea around her. Nivy and Reece got in the habit of laying wagers on how soon it would happen once breakfast started.

  So long as it wasn't his turn to clean the mess, Reece would then make his rounds of the ship, starting with checking on the engine room, Po, and the Bio-Conditions Simulator. After that, it was the infirmary and Hayden. The infirmary was set up like a hospital examination room, with two cots and walls of white cabinets and downward-tilted mirrors that made the room seem twice as big. Whenever Reece visited, Hayden was always sitting at his corner desk, taking notes while studying The Heron's mysterious manuscript. So long as he didn't have any news, Reece would then return to the bridge for his first shift of the day, or if he had enough time, a short nap.

  Like Po's, his quarters were separate from everyone else's, but where hers were in with the Afterquin, his were not yards away from the helm. Accessible only by ladder, the bedroom was an open loft, a low-ceilinged space over the corridor bottlenecking into the bridge. From his bed, which was just a thin mattress laid over a solid block built up out of the floor, he could see out the canopy window, watch the Euclid run over the nose of The Aurelia. His clothes hung from wooden pegs against the wall. A single naked photon globe, screwed upright into a metal stand at his bedside, was the loft's only other ornamentation. Everything about the space, from the lumps in the mattress to the way the photon globe hummed a long while after it had been turned off, was perfect.

  After dinner, the crew had its daily moot, which usually lapsed into a game of cards or a round of Pantedan foxtail with Reece and Gid as team captains. It was good to decompress, even so early on. There was an unspoken amount of pressure bearing down on the crew—the onboard temperature was still dropping five to six degrees a day, and even if they pretended differently, they were starting to feel it—but it was more than that. They were safe in the Euclid Stream, but being safe didn't make a person forget that danger was still out there. Safety could only re
ally last so long.

  It was now their third full day out of Honora, and Leto was less than thirty-six hours away. Reece rubbed his fingerless gloves together as he finished setting the autopilot and arched his back, stretching. He'd told Nivy to take the good news to the others; they'd needed a little pick-me-up since Mordecai had shown up to breakfast with frost in his mustache.

  “Po sent lunch,” Hayden announced as he stepped onto the bridge, a tin plate of food and a tankard in his hands, a large scroll tucked under one arm. His patched grey coat was buttoned up to his neck. Hayden always looked like someone had tried to beat the dust out of him with a broom, but these last few days, the look had grown troublingly pronounced. “And I brought the floor plan you asked for.”

  Distracted by the thick smell of warm brown sugar curling away from his lunch, Reece waved the floor plan aside, then took the plate off Hayden's hands. One look at the mash and diced potatoes set his mouth watering. “Did you already eat?”

  Hayden nodded calmly as he swung Nivy's navigator chair around and sat down. “I wanted to talk to you while we were still alone.”

  “Something to do with Nivy?” Reece blew on his forkload of potatoes before upending it into his mouth.

  “I hope not. But then again, I…” Hayden trailed off, pinching the bridge of his nose like he had a headache.

  “What?” Hayden just shook his head despondently. After a second's hesitation, Reece set his food on the flightpanel and rotated his squeaking chair to face his friend with his elbows on his knees. “What's going on?”

  Hayden's heavy sigh blew his bangs back from his glasses. “Someone's been stealing supplies from the infirmary.”

  For a minute, Reece blankly returned Hayden's miserable stare, his jaw slowly clenching. “You're sure?”

  “I wish I wasn't, but I've double-checked all the ledgers. I'm in the infirmary almost every waking hour, Reece. Whoever's stealing is doing it at night.”

  “Which doesn't help their case any.”

  “No,” Hayden sighed, “not really.”

  As much as he didn't want an answer, Reece had to ask, “Any idea who…?”

  Shifting uncomfortably, Hayden cleared his throat, intent on studying his hands in his lap. “Well, whoever it is, they've been taking pain agents, the strongest medicine I brought. I would think, based on the missing dosages, we'd be noticing some behavioral changes in them, unless…”

  “Unless they're always crazy.”

  “Yes.”

  “Mordecai.”

  “I don't know, Reece. I don't like thinking about it. But…what are you doing?”

  Crossing the bridge, Reece snatched the floor plan up from where Hayden had left it by the door and marched it back to the flightpanel, where he spread it determinedly. His eyes started roving the outlined squares of quarters, closets, nooks and crannies, following the printed lines of corridors he'd begun to know well. “Mordecai wouldn't do that.” His voice grew harder at Hayden's uncertain silence. “He wouldn't, Hayden. If he's our best suspect, there's more going on than meets the eye.”

  Hayden's chair squeaked as he stood and joined Reece at the panel. “Like what?”

  Not answering, Reece leaned down over the map, glaring at it. He wouldn't accuse any of the crew of stealing without proper evidence; he refused to even think it of them. And while that was all well and good, it left him with a serious problem. If someone was stealing from the infirmary, but that someone wasn't a part of his crew…that meant they weren't alone on The Aurelia. The little hairs on the back of his neck prickled at the thought.

  Rolling up the map, Reece beat it in his open palm, making a hollow thumping sound. “Where's Gid?”

  Hayden was still looking at him wonderingly over the tops of his bifocals. “He was in the galley.”

  Reece snatched the speaker com off the wall and cranked its golden dial to SW, for Ship Wide communication. “Nivy,” he said into the mouthpiece, “could you get up here? I need you on helm.”

  “Reece,” Hayden began, sounding uncomfortable as Reece hung up the com, “you're not suggesting Gideon—” He trailed off at Reece's scandalized look. “Okay, okay, I just—you two have been kind of at odds these last few days, and I didn't know if—”

  Snorting, Reece shook his head and pointed the map at Hayden's sheepish expression. “Just because Gid's been in a bleeding foul mood for the better part of a week doesn't mean—”

  “I know,” Hayden quickly insisted, holding up his hands in a peacemaking gesture. “I know. I wasn't thinking. You'd never suggest that.”

  “You're right, I wouldn't.”

  “I'm sorry.”

  With a never mind shrug, Reece nodded at the bridge door and led the way out into the corridor. “I just wish I knew what he’s been so bleeding touchy about, lately.”

  They passed Nivy on their way to the galley, carrying a bowl of porridge that reminded Reece he'd left his lunch unfinished. He tried offering a trade, her porridge for the plate on the bridge, but she bypassed him and Hayden without so much as acknowledging his proposition, chewing purposefully.

  The sounds of laughter found them while they were still a corridor away from the galley, Mordecai's hoarse guffaw, Po's tinkering giggle. Those two were always putting each other in stitches with jokes no one else could understand. An odd pair to hit it off, but then, Po could hit it off with anyone, and Mordecai…well, Mordecai was probably just glad for someone who didn't scratch their head at his punch lines.

  “Heya, Cap'n!” Po greeted exuberantly as Reece turned through the arched red doorway to the galley. Seated cross-legged on the long table framed by a dozen mismatched ladder-backed chairs—one of which was occupied by the pipe-smoking Mordecai—she waved with her spoon, then plunged it into her bowl of viscous grey porridge. “I sent your lunch with Hayden, didn't he find you?”

  Blinking, Reece looked over his shoulder, surprised to find himself alone. He glimpsed a bit of yellow out over the corner of his eye: Scarlet in another one of her floor-length coats, drifting down the corridor with Hayden, who was making clumsy conversation as he fiddled with his bifocals.

  Reece turned back to the galley with a disgusted shake of his head for girls being able to make ginghoos even out of someone as smart as Hayden.

  The galley had three parts: a dining room, a cozy lounge, and the galley itself, where the meals were prepared and the dishes stored. The oak table and its chairs monopolized most of the dining area, standing on a rug of polygonal designs that had somehow kept its brightness over the years, turquoise, orange, red, and purple. A tightly-wound iron staircase took the little corner that was left and spiraled up to the lounge, which was held over the galley by stout steel columns.

  A cupboard door banged shut. A second later, Gid's tousled head and broad shoulders rose up out of the corral of red counters hedging in the galley. His head came within a foot of brushing the galley's ceiling, or the loft's floor, however you wanted to look at it.

  “Hey,” Reece greeted him with a nod. “Do you have a minute? I need to talk to you.”

  Gid glanced at the pot in his hand and shrugged. “Sure.”

  “Mordecai,” the wizened old man tilted his head, “you too.”

  Frowning at Reece, Po tapped the back of her spoon on the surface of her porridge. “You're not really gonna come in here and say you need to talk to everyone but me, are you?”

  “There are only three of you in here, Po.”

  “It don't matter,” Po insisted, tapping more forcefully, so her spoon made a pattering sound. “It's rude. You can't just cut one person out. Tell him, Mordecai.”

  His bushy mustache twitching, Mordecai mumbled around his pipe stem, “You can't just cut one person out.”

  The saloon-style door closing off the counters squeaked as Gideon let it swing shut behind him. “What's goin' on?”

  Ignoring Po's whining sound, Reece stepped close to him and lowered his voice. “I think it's time we searched the ship,” he said, eyebr
ows raised meaningfully.

  Gideon glared thoughtfully at his expression before giving a slow nod of understanding. Reece knew he could count on him to not have forgotten about Mordecai's mysterious head bump. “Might wanna put the others on the bridge with Nivy Girl till it's done. Could get messy.”

  “But it won't,” Reece said firmly. As Gideon started to scowl, he added, “Whoever's here, they could just be another Scarlet.”

  It was a relief to see Gideon's old smirk shift into place. “You really want more than one'a her?”

  “So we've a stowaway,” Mordecai spoke up from the table. Gideon's smirk winked out the same time Reece felt his grin slip. “Thought we might. I've been smellin' somethin' odd here and there and couldn't put a person to it.”

  “A stowaway?” Po exclaimed as Gideon and Reece exchanged a flat look and turned to face her. She had put down her bowl and was scrambling into the chair next to Mordecai as if it was the last safe place left in the Epimetheus. “You…you think maybe they're…Kreft?”

  There was an uneasy pause that told Reece he wasn't the only one that idea was new and unsettling to. He hadn't forgotten about The Kreft—he couldn't, not any more than a person could forget about a dormant volcano gurgling under their house—but maybe he'd been hasty to focus so much of himself on the turbine and the temperature drop and making sure the crew was getting along. He wanted to kick himself. They had always suspected there might be another Kreft operative on Honora; Reece had simply been waiting for it to make a move, to give itself away. But The Kreft worked from the shadows, lurking, manipulating. Wouldn't they have a much better vantage point staying hidden, trailing the duke's idiot son all the way to the heart of The Heron Underground?

  Reece pointed at Po. “Bridge. Now.”

  Po huddled wide-eyed in her chair. “Nuh-uh, there ain't no way I'm walkin' all the way up there by myself.”

  “That's a bad idea waitin' to work,” Gideon agreed darkly as he brought out his revolver from its holster and started loading it.