Boarded
There was a loud explosion above the Battle Stations blare. The airship rocked as if shaken by a gust of wind.
“We’ve lost the starboard boiler, ma’am!” Brownhall said.
“That was not a boiler explosion, Mr Brownhall,” Captain Allayne Cruz said. “Had it been, the Peregrine wouldn’t be afloat.”
Brownhall examined the panel in front of him. He moved levers, pushed buttons, and finally tapped one bulb, annoyed, watching it light up. Red.
“Secondary valve, Skipper,” he said. “Engineering has taken the boiler down. It should be cooling down as we speak.”
Captain Cruz stared around her. Her bridge was a controlled mess, as it should be in an emergency. That boiler would take some time to cool down, and meanwhile the ship was in danger. The ship was already showing a slight list.
“Uno!” Cruz shouted. Her First Officer, Elisa “Rocky” May, stood to attention from her station. “Go to red alert. Make it silent, please. Initiate emergency procedures. And have Mr Alvarado blow that enemy ship out of the sky.”
“Aye, Ma’am!” May said.
“Mr Brownhall, reroute all power through the port boiler. Compensate for that list as fast as you can. And crank up that electric engine. We carry the battery weight for a reason,” she saw the officer’s face and raised a gloved finger. “No buts, Mr Brownhall. This is an emergency.”
“Aye, Skipper,” he said.
“Uno, you have the bridge,” Cruz said.
“May I ask where are you going, Ma’am?” May said, even as she raised to sit at the Captain’s station.
Cruz unholstered her two pistols and moved tiny levers on them. As they thrummed and their barrels lit up, she crossed them in front of her right below her chin, her fierce smile Illuminated by the eerie green glow, in a copy of her personal battle colours.
“I’m going to nail the bastard that’s wrecking my ship,” Cruz said.
She walked out of the bridge.
***
The aforementioned bastard was ripping through the starboard engine room, encased in a steam-powered suit of armour. He ignored bullets pinging off him, as small puffs of high pressure vapour hissed off his joints. He smacked a bulkhead, tearing the gauges embedded in it. Small explosions followed.
Engineer Jeanie Elfriede ducked under some pipelines, and tugged at Jamar Flodin’s sleeve.
“Under here, quickly!” she said. “I don’t think he’s going to stop here. We need to empty the boiler before he gets there and rips it apart!”
Jamar crawled behind his colleague, banging his head on a pipe as he tried not to look at her breeched derrière. Maybe one day he would dare tell her what he felt. You pick the best moments, Jamar, he thought.
“That will unbalance the ship, Elfriede!” he said instead.
“Let’s hope they notice upstairs,” she said. “But in case they don’t, we’ll manage the ballast tanks.”
Flodin sighed, but he couldn’t hear it amongst the hissing of steam and the shouts of the crew. Ahead of him, Jeanie was already sprinting towards a closed hatch. He watched her almost fall as the ship’s list sent some loose pieces her way, then recover and reach the hatch.
She was fighting against the latches when he got by her side and helped her. Together, they unlocked the hatch and opened it. A loud clang made them turn their heads.
“Shit!” they shouted together.
The armoured form was coming their way. The guy inside clearly knew something about ship design, and had come for the boiler. Jeanie and Jamar closed the door and looked through the porthole glass as they frantically worked the latches again.
“The hatch won’t stop him for long,” Jamar said.
“No,” Jeanie said. “But maybe she will!”
Captain Cruz had arrived.
***
Captain Allayne Cruz caught the two engineers — had they been Elfriede and Flodin? She thought they were — just entering the boiler’s hatchway, on their way to purge the boiler, she presumed. She surveyed the engineering room as fast as she could. Not much to be salvaged here, she judged, though she’d have to have Mr Brownhall make a report.
If they all survived, that is. She had to give it to the bastards: sending a lone armoured soldier to board their ship had been a bold move. She intended to make them pay dearly. Starting with the soldier.
Cruz’s first shot hit the hulking form square in his eyes. Or his helmet’s visor, or whatever it was. He staggered, and Cruz smiled. But he recovered quickly and kept coming. So, the armour was well built. She’d try to keep as much of it as she could, for Mr Brownhall and Dr McDonald’s benefit. She’d at least try.
She cautiously approached the behemoth. Even with the added height and weight, the man inside must have been a towering giant, since the armour was almost one time and a half as tall as she was, and she had been described as “imposing”. By the High Lady of the Admiralty, no less.
The giant swiped right with surprising speed, but Cruz was already rolling to dodge the attack. Damn, but she missed close quarters fight. The brute was faster than it should for his bulk, she noted. She kept her momentum so she could roll further away, then crouched and shot twice, fast, once with each pistol, aiming at the joints in his left leg. There was a satisfactory crack, but Cruz smirked. Still one of her shots had been deflected by the armour plates.
And now one of her pistols was spent. That was their downside: two shots only. She’d have to make her last shot count. Cruz holstered her exhausted pistol and unsheathed her cutlass. The colossus attacked again, all fists and no finesse.
Cruz sidestepped and crouched, but still took a glancing blow to her left arm. Coming from the steam-powered machine-man, the blow sent her reeling, her second pistol flying off to rest in the far shadows of the engineering room.
So much for that last shot, she thought. Well, no real options left. It’s been a long time.
She stood and concentrated, calling in her inner strength. She felt it all: her skin extending, her bones reforming, sinew becoming stronger, muscles growing, the wound she had just received healing. She felt all the pain that accompanied the change, welcomed it like a long-lost companion. She licked her enlarged fangs. Had she been younger and less disciplined, Cruz would have howled with pride. As it was, that would not be fitting for a woman of her rank.
Or a werewolf of her rank.
“Come,” she growled at the titan, “show me how strong you are.”
~~~~
This is my entry for this week’s Chuck Wendig’s Flash Fiction Challenge: It Starts with a Bang.
The challenge was quite simple: as the title says, “It starts with a bang”. 1000 words, and that’s it.
I considered several ideas and in the end decided to go for a steampunk story. I love steampunk: it’s the first genre I wrote, and to me it’s always fun to come back to it. I have indeed had fun with this little story.
