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Part 3: THE AIRSHIP
Maira had heard tales of her father’s exploits.
Law enforcement called him a criminal, albeit a reformed one. An Administrator couldn’t commit crimes, not when they made the laws. But the stories in all the penny dreadfuls that sold by the thousands told a tale of a person who robbed from the rich and evil, and gave to the poor, the good, the needy. That he was able to retire rich and pardoned was, of course, glossed over in those collections of short stories. Somehow he always had plenty for himself, despite his charity.
The Fallen Star was sandwiched between an ancient and rusting locomotive and a teetering pyramid of crushed carriages. Ham was blessed by his relationship with the late Deanfleet; his scrapyard caught the very edge of the sunlight from the manor house's spear, and it was here that he'd built his ramshackle office. Maira took a seat opposite him as he pulled out paperwork. Out in the yard she could hear Salem and Annalise chucking stones at a carriage door.
Mercifully, Ham brought out a pot of coffee and some slightly stale biscuits before talking business.
'You look like you've not eaten today,' he said, brow wrinkling with concern. Maira shrugged.
'I haven't,' she replied. 'I've been on a liquid diet since I got the letter.' She nibbled at a biscuit, waiting to see if her stomach would turn, and inhaled the strong burnt-coffee scent from her mug. Just smelling it made her feel steadier.
'Your dad would want you to look after yourself, Maira,' Ham continued. 'Your dad wanted to look after you while he was here - more than you could know.'
'Yeah, well... look where caring got him.' She stared into the coffee, where her face stared back, distorted. It looked... disappointed? Angry? Sad?
'He was the only one I didn't have to fight when I left,' she said eventually. 'He gave me his blessing, put me in touch with an airship crew. He practically packed my bags for me - I was so mad about it at the time. I wanted to do everything myself!'
'Do you resent him for that?' Ham asked. Maira shook her head.
'I wished I'd written, years after. Wished I'd told him how much it ended up meaning to me. That captain was the best I served under. At the time I couldn't wait to jump ship.'
Ham raised his tin cup and nodded.
'A toast then. To Dorian Deanfleet: he was better than we gave him credit for!' Maira raised her mug and took a sip.
'I dunno if I'd say that,' she said. 'He tried. But he was never there, not until I was heading for the door. Perhaps he knew I was just waiting to run away.'
There was silence as they contemplated this, the ship, and the late Deanfleet. Then Ham shuffled through the papers and presented them to Maira.
'Ownership papers,' He said. 'Four of them, I'm afraid. A copy for me, one for you, and one for the registry. The final one's for Argyle - I don't get my money unless he has proof I've released the ship to you.'
'Is it skyworthy?' Maira asked, staring out of the dusty window. There was a sharp crack as Annalise expertly hucked a stone through a carriage window.
'Dorian asked me to keep her so. I've tried to keep my word on that.'
'And the 75,000? That suggests an awful lot of repairs.' Ham scoffed.
'He's being generous! Despite the surroundings, I can assure you she's seen barely a scratch in the last decade.'
'Would you buy it?'
'Well she's a real beauty, if you're asking my opinion! A classic of style and design, but she can... you're not asking my opinion, are you?'
'I could sell it to you,' Maira said. 'It's my ship now, after all. What do you say? 30,000 and it's yours again - auction it off for even more profit.'
Ham scowled at her and jabbed his finger at the papers.
'First things first, she's not yours until you sign the forms. Second, if you were just to sell her back to me I'd as soon keep her and lose the 75,000. Third, some daughter of his you'd be if you just up and sold the Fallen Star away! What is this, some kind of test? A joke? Your ma didn't put you up to this, did she?' Maira shook her head.
'I left this place, Ham,' she explained. 'i left this family and swore I'd never return! The ship, it's... another reminder of where I came from. Of what I lost the moment I let them know who I was. I swore I'd hear the will reading and leave, and I can't take an airship with me.'
'Uh-huh? You've got a gig all lined up, have you? Hunting dragons again? Or smuggling light? Maybe some piracy on the side! For goodness' sake, girl, your dad's trying to give you one last opportunity!'
'I didn't ask him to!' Maira stood, knocking her chair to the floor as she gripped the edges of the desk. Her breath was ragged. She looked around as though she were just seeing the room for the first time.
'I can't... I'm not... I won't...' she tried, the anger knotting her stomach into fear. She felt the buzzing at the base of her skull and briefly tasted blood as her feet fought to lead her from the room.
'I'm sorry,' Ham said quietly. 'This wasn't my idea. It wasn't my call. If you want... if you want, I can buy it off you. But I want you to at least take a tour of it first. Please?'
Maira's features softened, though deeper inside the knot did not untangle. She took a deep breath and sighed.
'Can I bring my coffee?' She croaked. Ham nodded.
'Why not? You've had a hard day; Hell, you can bring the biscuits too.'
From the exterior the Fallen Star was a remarkable ship: it rested on two steel legs which looked like axeheads and split each into three points of a star more than two storeys overhead. Halfway up a walkway ringed the bell, with a ramshackle assortment of wooden rooms above and below. Beneath, just about resting level with the axeheads, an enormous wooden tail sagged down and opened up into a vast cargo bay. Maira gaped at the cavernous space, suddenly feeling very small.
'Well your dad was a smuggler,' Ham said as he led her through the space. 'He liked to keep a lot of space for the authorities to search. And it helped when he took on legitimate jobs, too.' Maira huffed a laugh.
'Funny, he never mentioned those,' she said.
They continued on, taking the stairs up to the catwalk above the bay, and a ladder from there to the walkway on top. Most of the rooms were storage or crew quarters, cramped spaces with little personality. Maira had spent years living in one bunk or another, closely guarding her belongings - she grimaced at the reminder of such recent sour partings. More important, at least to Ham, was the mess: it was not a large room but it had three fixed tables and a comfy kitchen in which food could be cooked for over a dozen at a time.
‘The Fallen Star has berths for around thirty,’ he explained. ‘But they’d work in shifts, so food was cooked when needed.’
‘How many are needed to fly this thing?’ Maira asked, and Ham chuckled.
‘Only around seven or eight for a full watch! Your dad never did have much truck with huge crews - if there were more than ten people on this boat they’d be coming off as soon as possible!’
Seven or eight. Three for shifts at the helm and another three for the engine, Maira guessed. Which left two for... guard duty? Lookouts were necessary, for spying distant ports or threats in the sky, so perhaps a rotating shift of two across the night. So few for such a large boat... Maira shuddered at the thought of what ghosts might inhabit such empty space.
‘Where am I going to find seven other people?’ she asked aloud. ‘I can hardly fly this myself.’
‘Well you might need to make short hops, but you could do it on one shift,’ Ham said. ‘Come on; plenty more boat to see!’
The helm was next, a narrow room clad in steel, but with wide windows looking out across the front. It was nestled in between two gun bays and protruded out like a snout for a wider view. There were three bays: one with a map for navigation; one with a crude radio setup which had not been updated in decades; and the final one, a comfortable seat behind the ship’s wheel. Everything was a little dusty, but otherwise in good working order.
‘We’d need to update the radio,’ Maira noted. ‘That thing is years out of code by now. It’s all morse these days.’
‘Hmph! A proper radio lets you talk to people!’ Ham muttered. ‘But I can look into fitting a telegraph key once we’re airborne.’
‘So one person to steer, one to map, and one to talk,’ Maira continued. ‘Or, if you’re desperate, the same person to do all three. Me, maybe.’
‘You’ve had some experience on boats bigger than this. Surely you’ve done all three!’
‘Not mapping. That was always the captain or the first mate’s job. But I’ve watched over people’s shoulders from time to time; I can pick it up.’
‘You sound like you’re ready to take her for a spin!’ Ham laughed, and then shrank back under Maira’s scowl.
‘I’m just... taking stock, is all. Gotta know what needs fixing up if it’s to fetch a good price.’
‘Right, sure.’ Ham said no more, but Maira pursed her lips at his knowing smile.
‘What else is there?’ she asked.
There was the engine room. Ham took her over a dizzying array of instruments - the communications array, a fuel engine for the propeller which drove the ship forward, the rudder controls which connected all the way to the helm (’The biggest bastard of design on this ruddy ship!’ Ham spat), and most importantly-
‘A light engine?’ Maira gasped. ‘Just for the bell?’
‘Ah, I thought that would impress you,’ Ham said with a grin. ‘Yep! No quicker way to heat air, although if the shielding around the sides breaks you could end up blind! Had that happen to an engineer on one of your dad’s later flights, that was a rough day. The Umbrella Men caught up to us and we had a hard fight - that was when he started talking about settling down somewhere.’
Maira looked up. Suspended above was a curtain of fabric which, when heated, would fill with hot air and lift the whole structure. The bell was enormous, it took up the swath of space between the two metal outers and between the helm and the cargo bay. A wing of Deanfleet manor would fit comfortably in here, and Maira had to wonder that the light engine could heat that same volume of air in a short time. It was a tiny device in contrast, a squat box barely four feet long. A rod of light would be placed inside, and the heat it gave off would generate lift.
‘It’s ingenious,’ Maira said. ‘But light’s an expensive resource. How did dad ever make enough to run this engine for so long?’
‘Ah, well, he didn’t exactly pay for the light he was using,’ Ham said. ‘Let me show you one more thing.’
They should have been ordinary storerooms. At three points along each side of the Fallen Star were spacious rooms which had been rendered cramped by the apparatus inside them. Wires connected to leather-wrapped rods of polarised glass, stacked in neat rows in specially-made racks. Those wires criss-crossed and threaded into a net, across which was stretched some dark, shiny material. It was as though someone had taken bat wings and folded them into the ship’s storerooms.
'God's Tears!' Maira breathed. 'This is... it's...'
'Clever, isn't it? Your dad had a permit for all this, of course - you'll probably need to get them renewed or reapply for-'
'No! No. Ham, you don't understand.' Maira inspected the jars and wings minutely. 'Ham, this is highly illegal now. There are no permits, the only light runners nowadays are government-owned ships. If I go up in this I'll be arrested within a day!' Despite herself, Maira laughed. She slapped herself on the forehead theatrically.
'I get it now!' she continued. 'This is dad's big joke. He gave me his old ship, knowing I can't sell it because it's crammed full of his illegal smuggling equipment, and I can't take it because I'll be shot down as soon as I'm airborne! He put you up to this, right?' She turned to Ham expectantly, but he returned her gaze, deflated.
'I don't think he'd do that, Maira,' He said quietly. 'I've had many conversations with him aboard this ship, a lot of them talking about you. This isn't a joke; your dad wanted this for you, he left it to you because he loved you.'
'Then why the illegal equipment?' Maira retorted, suddenly angry. 'Why the outdated communications? Why an engine I couldn't possibly afford to run? There's so much here that I can't believe he'd leave in, if he meant for me to have this and just leave with it!'
Silence rang between them, Maira exhausted, Ham subdued. She watched as he looked down at his feet, trying to come up with a reason.
'I think,' He said at length, 'You ought to come and see the Captain's Quarters.'