The officer was a rather mousy specimen, Jonny thought, with soft hair thinner even than Malcolm’s and a lightweight build. His eyes danced with a controlled fright.
“Major, will you please identify yourself and produce authorization for access to the airship in question?” He stood back from the locked gate. The fence was high. The two sentries remained at the ready.
“I am Major Cobb, and my authorization is standing here next to me. Do you not recognize Captain Arkwright, Lieutenant?”
“I do, sir. But—”
“But nothing. That’s an end to it. My prisoner has information vital to Operations. I must transport him to Richmond as soon as possible. Don’t you know what’s happening tonight, Lieutenant?”
The fear shone brighter in the slight man’s eyes, but he held his ground. “There has been some… unusual chatter on the crystal, sir. But that doesn’t overturn military protocol, I am afraid, Major.”
Brixton gave a convincing, exasperated sigh. Jonny pulled against the strong hand gripping his arm and made choked sounds behind the gag, but that, he realized, was probably just playing into this fabricated scenario of Brixton’s. Struggling, he got himself turned partway around. The battered military truck had been parked just outside the range of the field’s lights. In the shadows it could easily be mistaken for a regulation vehicle. Brixton had planned well.
“Lieutenant,” Brixton barked, striding forward. “My men and I have only narrowly escaped an ambush not twenty minutes ago. The Gretna garrison is under siege at this moment. There is blood and fire and destruction everywhere. We managed to capture this miscreant”—he hooked a thumb back at Jonny—“and I intend to take him to American Operations Headquarters where the highest levels will interrogate him for all he’s worth. The man is a rebel! Can you not understand? The fucking American revolution is underway!”
Jonny watched the lieutenant losing his resolve. He must have heard something on the crystal set in the guardhouse that corroborated some part of Brixton’s tale. He looked to Arkwright, who was standing between the Irish man and the driver. Doubtlessly all Brixton’s people were armed.
“Captain, will you confirm the major’s request for access to your vessel?”
Arkwright stood straight, a ramrod of a man. He was silent just long enough to be uncomfortable, and then he said without intonation, “Those are the orders.”
The lieutenant gestured to the sentries, who unlocked and pulled open the gate. The group marched through.
Ahead, the buoyant bird hung against the sky, attached to a soaring tethering pole. A wheeled stairway sat beneath it. The ship looked larger and even more menacing than when it had loomed over the Quarter earlier, Jonny thought.
As their party started up the stairs, he wondered how much of what Brixton had said was true. Siege and blood and fire. Maybe it was all a ruse, false broadcasts made to this base to unnerve the hapless lieutenant.
Or maybe there was something more to it, more at play here on this night. The humid air seemed to crackle around them, as if alive with a gathering disquiet, the sort of uneasiness that might presage a great upheaval of some kind.
They entered the ship.
BRIXTON HIMSELF took Jonny to a small cabin and locked him in, first untying him and saying, “I don’t have time to convince you right now of the magnitude of our cause. But I’ll hope to sway you yet.”
So Jonny sat on the shelflike bed in a closet of a room. The engines had breathed and bellowed to life, and he’d felt the queasy rising of the ship, which creaked and groaned ominously. He wanted to tell himself this wasn’t happening, but his alert mind wouldn’t permit such self-deception. He quashed his fears and assessed his situation.
Evidently he had fallen in with the Colonial Underground, an “organization” he’d always thought more rumor than fact. Many people groused about the British. Some went so far as to opine that what this land needed was another effort at revolt, something better than what had been sloppily attempted in Boston many years ago. In New York, Jonny had heard talk of this on front stoops, among the poor working class, more a means of letting off steam than anything. In New Orleans, it was intellectual drunks murmuring sedition in Quarter barrooms.
But the thing was real. Or real enough for Brixton to have pulled off this heist magnificently. Jonny had been the key to Arkwright. Arkwright the key to access to the airship. Now, apparently, they were aloft, which meant Brixton’s gang must know how to operate the imposing craft.
Was this really revolution, though? Maybe it was just theft of the ship, and a ransom for the captain later on, just like Jonny had first figured.
“How did that gag taste, boy?”
Jonny hopped to his feet, startled. There was of course nowhere to hide in this cramped compartment, yet the voice somehow seemed to be in the room with him. He put an ear to the polished mahogany door but heard no one breathing on the other side.
Then he realized whose voice he had just heard. “It tasted like your spit, friend,” he said with a touch of insolence.
“Didn’t get enough of that earlier?”
Jonny homed in on the sound. He spotted a small vent at the top of one of the walls. Climbing onto a tiny desk, he peered into the metal grille. An eye stared back at him.
“Are you hurt?” Jonny asked, the question leaping out of him. Why ask that? he wondered. He and this man were hardly on the same side.
“No…,” Arkwright responded, nonplussed. Then he regained his own brazen tone, one to match Jonny’s. “At least I made a decent grab for your friend’s pistol. You couldn’t be bothered to do more than squirm and mewl.”
It irked Jonny, though it was obviously meant to. “You’re lucky he didn’t use that barking iron on you.”
“They don’t let cowards into the Fleet, boy. So-called ‘Major Cobb’ holds no fear for me.”
“Yet you’re as locked up as me, it seems.” He could hear the captain’s tight, controlled breathing. He was probably as precariously balanced atop something on the other side of this wall so to reach the vent.
In a wrier tone Arkwright said, “This is my bloody navigator’s cabin. He’s got French photos all over this damned wall. I never thought to see so much uncovered feminine flesh in my days.”
“I’ll bet you didn’t,” Jonny said and couldn’t help but chuckle.
After a moment Arkwright gave a single snort of laughter. “All right, I’ll grant you that. Tell me one thing, J.C.”
“Maybe I will, Archer.”
Arkwright grunted at the use of his alias, then asked, “Are you truly homosexual, or were you just pretending with me?”
The question caught Jonny off-guard, especially as it sounded sincere. He had thought he and the captain to merely be playing cat and mouse through this vent, with Arkwright probably working toward trying to wheedle information out of him. Jonny hadn’t yet decided what he would divulge to this man. He’d been looking for an advantage. But this query of Arkwright’s had a tenor of vulnerability to it, as if the answer would have serious significance. Or it could be that the captain was just playing him at some deeper level.
Jonny said, “I’ve been queer since I understood the meaning of the term.”
He heard Arkwright let out a pent-up breath. “Well,” he finally said, “there’s that at least. But you’re still a knave, J.C. And if your confederates have turned on you, it’s your just deservings.”
“Yeah? Well, piss on you, jackyank.”
“I should scrub that mouth.”
“You plan on doing it with your tongue again?”
“Does the thought send you into ecstasies?”
“Enough to want to jet in your mouth, Captain Sodomy.”
“Perhaps I ought to put you across my knee.”
“And spank my bare backside?”
“Spank it red, boy!”
It had swiftly escalated into absurdity. Yet Jonny felt himself on the brink of a panting excitement. Their kiss in the Rookery returned t
o him, a full sensory memory. He remembered how his cock had throbbed and the way that Arkwright’s own erect manhood had bulged in his trousers.
He tried to see the man clearly through the grille, but he was only puzzle pieces, just inches away. It was maddening. He felt certain, despite everything that had happened, that if they were in a cabin together, they would resume their amorous activity of earlier. See it through, in fact. Even if all they had were one of these ridiculously tiny naval beds, they would surely climb atop, naked, grappling, growling, tongues flashing, hands groping, cocks pulsing and dribbling with need.
The images nearly overpowered him. His balance started to slip, and he scrabbled clumsily to keep his footing on the minuscule desk.
“Are you hurt?” Arkwright asked with much the same spontaneous concern Jonny had shown moments ago asking this same question.
Jonny had caught himself. “I’m fine, Archer.”
“That’s not my name.”
“Yes. But you never know when you’ll need an alias.”
“Only a lawbreaker needs an alias.”
“Or a Fleet captain visiting a queer bar.”
“Touché, mon frère.”
They shared a silence through the grille. Finally Jonny said, “I… don’t know what’s going to happen. To either of us. I think these men are part of the Colonial Underground.”
“I’d say the evidence strongly supports that.”
“You like to be snide, don’t you? It would be more convincing if you had a proper Brit pip-pip accent, jackyank.”
“I am a citizen of the Crown, with the same rights as the Lord Mayor of London.”
“I’ll bet you still got picked last for cricket in school.”
“We didn’t play cricket. I was schooled in these Colonies. We played baseball.”
It gave Jonny pause. He tried to imagine this man, who’d looked so dignified in his uniform, holding a proper baseball bat in hand, looking to run the bases in a muddy field. He’d always heard that Brits born in America, especially those in the military, were treated as second-class citizens.
“This is your ship, Captain. Do you know how we can break out of these rooms?”
“Enough brute force would do it. But that would raise an unholy ruckus and doubtlessly bring a sentinel. What would you plan on doing if you did get free of this cabin?”
It was a very good question. The airship was aloft, heading Christ knew where. Jonny, of course, had no idea how to pilot it. Obviously Arkwright knew, but the two of them were outnumbered and outgunned. How did you escape something that was thousands of feet up in the air? The thought rolled nausea through Jonny. He had never liked heights. In fact, he’d never been up in one of these contraptions before. He had come down from New York by standing at roadsides, waving down random electricars, and asking strangers for rides. It had been a surprisingly effective means of travel.
Finally he answered Arkwright, “I want my feet back on land. I don’t really care where at this point. Can you get any sense of where we’re going?”
“From inside a locked cabin? No. The only thing I can tell in here is that my navigator prefers women with outsized bosoms.”
“That’s not much help.”
“None at all, I should say.”
Somehow the badinage had gotten chummy. Even if they weren’t on the same side, they had a common enemy. Jonny said, “The man who posed as Major Cobb is called Brixton. At least it’s the name I know him under. He’s a criminal, a lieutenant in a New Orleans crime ring led by someone named Kane. I worked in the same gang with him but never knew he had revolutionary leanings.”
“And the other men?”
“Never saw them before today.”
“This Brixton didn’t let you in on his further plans?”
“He only told me enough to… uh….”
“To let you ensnare me, yes? Well, more fool I. So, do I take it you want revenge on your former partner in crime?”
“I would settle for a fast escape. He can keep the money he promised me. I’m not greedy.”
Arkwright hummed as he thought, then, “He’s not infallible, your man Brixton. He put us in adjacent cabins, without thought that we might communicate. That we might… collude.”
“You’re proposing an alliance, then?” The idea sped Jonny’s heart some.
“Needs must. But know that I still hold you in low regard, boy.”
“You can take it out on me when you give me that spanking,” Jonny sassed.
It got another snort of a laugh from the other side of the vent. “You’re a rascal, I’ll give you that.”
“You have no idea, Archer. But tell me, if we’re both hopelessly trapped inside these cabins, what difference does our little confederation make?”
Arkwright said, “The engines started smoothly. We untethered and gained altitude. We’ve been underway since, with no interruption to speed or heading.”
“That just means they’ve got everything under control, doesn’t it?”
“Yes and no. These brigands obviously can fly this vessel. But what they haven’t discovered is that my chief engineer is still aboard. He never disembarked. He was going to oversee an overhauling of the Indomitable. He detests shore leave. The fact that his precious engines have functioned without any hitches tells me he hasn’t revealed himself to this unauthorized crew. He must be spying on them, slipping through the ducts. When he has a full assessment of the situation, he will act. Perhaps he’ll disable the engines so to force a landing. Perhaps rescue us from these cabins. Perhaps—and I say this only because I know of his mean streak when he loses at cards—he will cut their throats, one by one. We shall wait and see what happens, J.C.”
FOUR.
THE SENSE of violation was intolerable. Hamilton had been trained in emergency situations. He’d been drilled in obscure contingencies that would surely never arise in the course of his or anyone else’s duties. Yet he had persevered in the exercises as always, obeying instructions to the letter, proving himself again and again to the Fleet command structure.
But no one had ever mentioned how it would feel to have one’s ship seized. He knew not to panic, how to maintain clear thinking. That had been included in his general grooming to be an officer. But this awful feeling of infringement—of defilement, even—tore through his very being. He had always taken a natural pride in his ship. Such was expected of a captain.
However, he hadn’t realized until today that he in fact loved the Indomitable. And he would be damned if these villains would do as they liked with her!
Yet he understood, utilizing that clear officer’s thinking, that the crisis was for the moment in the hands of Chief Prichard, the Welsh engineer who—Hamilton sincerely hoped—was indeed secretly at large on this vessel and planning some daring feat. Berwyn Prichard was a tough piece of work, twenty-six years with the Airborne, virtually since the navy had first started flying the birds. He had made it clear to Hamilton only yesterday that he had no intention of taking shore leave or even setting foot in New Orleans, a city he described as “dissolute in the sight of God.”
Hamilton suspected the man’s real reason for staying on board was his unapologetic distrust of anyone but he handling the ship’s intricate and powerful engines. When Hamilton had assumed the captaincy two years ago, Prichard had come along with the newly built craft. Before the bird was even aloft, the chief engineer had an inventory of mechanical changes he wished to make, all, he said, in the service of maximizing the ship’s speed and durability.
When Hamilton, so fresh to the captain’s chair he could still scarcely believe the fulfilled dream real, had questioned the wisdom of revamping a vessel just out of dry dock, he received stony silence in reply. Prichard was utterly sure he was correct.
The captain decided to let the man prove himself. He would be fairer in his assessment than any in the Fleet had ever been with him, he vowed.
They took the Indomitable in its unaltered condition on its first run. Eve
ry aspect of the ship’s performance was duly recorded. Then Hamilton allowed Prichard to make a small number of his changes to the engines. Performance improved slightly on the next tour. A few more changes were sanctioned. The stamina and velocity of the ship increased dramatically.
After that, Prichard was awarded a free hand. When he wanted improvements, they were made. The Welshman never asked for anything that would put the engines outside of naval specifications. Hamilton wasn’t even sure the alterations would succeed with other Fleet vessels. Berwyn seemed to have a preternatural feel for this craft. If he asked for a change in engineering personnel as well, Hamilton had learned it was wise to grant the request. Prichard’s immediate staff was now the finest in the Fleet, so far as Hamilton was concerned.
So the notion of the chief slinking about through the ship’s ducts wasn’t entirely far-fetched, though there was a tincture of wish fulfillment to the idea. Hamilton hoped the possibility at least gave J.C. some comfort.
What? That last thought stopped Hamilton abruptly. He had been engaged in an abbreviated pacing of his navigator’s cabin—two steps one way, a sharp turn of the heel, two steps back. He had hopped down from his perch by the vent. When he’d first heard someone in the adjacent cabin, he had climbed up and peered through the small grille. His heart had leapt at the sight of the blond youngster. He had thought it mere rage at first. This man had betrayed him after all.
Yet despite this, he had felt a renewal of the desire he had experienced when they kissed. That wonderful, deep, masculine kiss had promised so much, a prolonged night of unfettered lust, a consummation at least as complete as what he’d known—too long ago—with Percy in Rhode Island.
It had been wise, he told himself now, to have arranged a tentative alliance with the younger man. J.C. could be valuable in dealing with this Brixton and his agents. But Hamilton had to remember that they weren’t truly partners. The American couldn’t be trusted. He was a thief by his own admission.
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