With my to-do list lengthening before I move, I’m going to have to drop down to one update a week for a month or two, so check back on Fridays. At the beginning of June, I hope to be back to the regular two-a-week schedule.
Cannon joined him and surveyed the chart. The wooden marker representing Inconstant sat at the far corner of the table. Churchill said, “There we are, seventy-five miles south of Alexandria, course due west. The British zeppelin is twenty-five miles east, in and out of the clouds. Her radio transmissions say she’s HMS Sparrow.”
“How’d they find us again?”
“I couldn’t say, captain. We’ve been loitering here long enough for any number of people to have spotted us.”
“We outran her before. How is she staying with us?”
Churchill shrugged. “She’s closed five miles in the last twenty minutes. Perhaps she’s loaded light.”
“Looks like we’re in for a fight, either way.” Cannon looked forward to the bridge and aft to the radio room. In both compartments, the crew had unrolled the armored shutters, leaving only narrow vision slits. Through them, Cannon could see slices of sky, deepening in color and dotted with clouds tinted pink by the setting sun. “Helm, climb to ten thousand feet, and set your trim there. May as well have some sky under us. Radio, call down to the briefing room and have Joe ready the Sunday punch.”
“Aye aye.”
As the crew carried out his orders, Cannon tilted his head and thought for a moment. A smile played across his face, and he looked across the map table at one of his pirates. She’d signed on in Darwin last month, and he couldn’t quite put his finger on her name— “It’s Tomlin, right?”
“That’s right. Jane Tomlin.”
“Run to the library,” Cannon said, hobbling to the radioroom to borrow a pen and a pad of paper. “Look this up for me in Jane’s Fighting Airships. It’s out on the reading desk.” Tomlin took the paper and blinked. “On the double!” Cannon added.
Tomlin jumped, said, “Yes, sir,” and hurried up the ladder.
I ended up having to do a lot of driving yesterday, and didn’t have enough time to get a post typed. Updates will resume on Friday.
At church today, we were in and around 1 Corinthians 15, so here’s a quotation.
1 Corinthians 15:20-22 wrote:Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.
Once the video of the message goes up, I’ll be sharing it—it’s a good watch.
In the sense that it’s a good Friday, and also Good Friday. No story content today. I might have some geopolitical commentary content over at the Fish Bowl for you later, though, and if I do, I’ll point you thataway.
Cannon nodded to himself. He took pride in an efficient, well-drilled crew, and although this one, like all pirate crews, worked with a certain devil-may-care attitude, it fit the bill. As he made his way carefully down the ladder, they cheered. Word would have gotten out about the payday. Even subtracting the many expenses they’d incurred—one wrecked truck, airplane repairs, a great deal of fuel—each of the hands would see a good deal of loot. Cannon waved them back to work and joined the others from the Albatross just as aero engines began coughing to life and rumbling at idle. Over the din, Cannon shouted, “Emma, Pietro, Marcel—head to the briefing room. Isea, lock down the laboratory and get to your battle station. Mr. Masaracchia, you’re welcome to join me on the bridge.”
As Cannon’s crew dashed off to their appointed tasks, Masaracchia replied, “Lead the way.”
Going forward out of the hangar, they passed the last few pilots on the way to the briefing. Further forward on the ventral catwalk, gun crews climbed the ladders to the broadside flak pieces. A hundred feet overhead, beam-to-beam walkways suspended between the gas cells connected the port and starboard batteries.
A hundred feet before the ventral catwalk reached the forward crew spaces, Cannon lifted a hatch in the floor grating. He climbed down the ladder beneath it to the map room and limped to the map table. “Mr. Churchill, what do we have?”
As Masaracchia joined Cannon, the short, stout man at the map table turned. “Welcome back, captain.”
Happy (US) Tax Day! I hope you had a simple enough tax situation, like I did last year, so that you could file in January.
In other news, some friends of mine gave me a great story idea, so I’m totally going to be working on that on the side.
Okay, so I wasn’t quite as un-swamped as I thought. I did manage to get a DCS video up on Youtube, though. Sorry about no story content.
Sorry about that, guys—it’s been a crazy busy week for me. In random content you might enjoy, I posted an album over at imgur of a ship I just finished in StarMade (you might recall a piece on it over at the Fish Bowl from a few months ago). I’m also fiddling with a boring little Youtube video of some content from the new DCS World open beta patch, which I might have done tonight. Anyway, updates ought to resume as scheduled tomorrow.
“Copy that. You sitting this one out?”
“That’s right, Joe.” The Albatross rocked beneath Cannon as the hangar crew moved it from the skyhook to the hangar rails. “I’m a little banged up. You’ll be in command out there.”
“Sure thing. I”ll get suited up. Inconstant out.”
The deck crew, now engaged in readying Inconstant‘s warbirds, moved one of the Gorcrow medium bombers aside, then slid the Albatross in behind it, out of the way for the coming fight. It swung gently as it came to a stop, and a thump sounded through the frame as a deck crewman leaned a ladder against the cargo door. Emma and Lecocq helped Cannon through the crawlway, where Iseabail, Burr, and di Giacomo had already climbed down to the deck. Emma and Lecocq followed them, but Cannon paused at the cargo door to watch the deck operations.
A hundred pirates scurried around to the whining of hydraulics and electric motors and the cough of idling engines, preparing Inconstant‘s planes for a fight. Some dragged fuel hoses, carrying them up ladders to the hanging planes. Amidst the vinelike tangle of the hanging fuel lines, other deck crewmen carried ammunition cans, extra belts draped around their shoulders. Others, balanced precariously on wings and halfway falling out of open cockpits, fed ammunition belts into open access panels over the machine guns. Still others, working in teams, carried rockets and aerial torpedoes from the magazine, winching them from the deck up to the airplanes. There, men and women hanging in harnesses maneuvered the weapons onto launch rails.
