Wind Dancer: Secret War Steampunk Series - Adventure Mystery + Mad Science Read online

  Cover summary

  The Invaders came from the sky, unleashing their death rays on the Earth. From Mars some said, or beyond. Cities fell before them, one after the other. A Great Alliance was formed between countries who had played at war against each other in the time before. Queen Victoria brought together a convocation of scientists, among them the Savant, Tesla. The knowledge of city shields and ways to fight against the foe went out to everyone who would listen, in all corners of the world. Mad science and mystery worked hand in hand with human courage.

  Thirty years later, in the 1890’s, the world has changed beyond recognition. The Invaders have been driven off, some say all killed, but is that just a story? Those who are left covet the power they had before the Reconstruction. Others embrace this new world and the freedom it brings after the War.

  The Airship Wind Dancer is led by Captain William Hunting Owl, a tribesman from the Americas. Together with his first officer, a former British Air captain, and a Hindu Sorceress Assassin, he fights to keep his ship flying. The crew of the privateer comes from every Free Port still standing. They seek to make a living in a world that has few rules except for the Articles that guide life on the ship. Their shipmates are their family; all have lost something they held dear, and few speak of it.

  William Hunting Owl and Lawrence Rogers seek to discover who killed Will’s father. They are willing to do whatever it takes to find their answers.

  THE WIND DANCER

  Secret War Steampunk Series

  Adventure, Mystery + Mad Science

  by

  Raven Bond

  IMPISH PRESS

  2014

  Dedication

  For the amazing Seattle steampunk community

  Chapter One

  Airship Wind Dancer, Bengal Province

  Free India States 1896

  Thirty years after the Great War

  The airship turned gracefully through the valleys of the first mountain peaks of the Darjeeling Hills. Her silver-gray skin seemed to absorb the sun as it slanted behind her. For all that the ship appeared huge from the ground, it was as silent as a floating feather, her bladeless impellers making a faint humming sound like many bees. Along the sides of the main cigar-shaped body was painted a very realistic Hindu dancer and beneath her form the words FAS Wind Dancer. Under the main body was a section towards the front, with windows that looked out over the ground like huge eyes.

  William Hunting Owl, Captain of the Wind Dancer didn’t like to be surprised, especially by people shooting at his ship. Being shot at came with the job, but still, he preferred to be the one doing the shooting. They had just begun dropping altitude to survey the wreck of their quarry, the East India Company airship Raja Goh, when the ambush came.

  They had been hired to investigate the fate of the merchant ship after she had gotten off a short distress call. The big fear for the East India Company was that air raiders of some kind had moved into the northern trade route to Darjeeling. The Company had an exclusive route between Calcutta and Darjeeling in Free India that was very profitable. The thought that air raiders might finally be making it this far north had scared someone enough at the Company to pay the Wind Dancer’s not inconsiderable fees just to take a look-see. Judging from the wreckage scattered about the side of the hill, Will figured that fear was right.

  Will had been looking through the heavy, armored glass windows that ran deck to ceiling in a half circle around the forward part of the Dancer’s bridge. The bridge was awash in the bright sunlight of a cloudless day. The lookouts did a good job of spotting, but he still liked his own eyes on things when possible. The land below was low rising scrub coming up against the mountains. He could almost feel the heat rising off the ground beneath him. In lots of ways the land reminded him of the Montana lands he had hunted in as a boy. The wreck site to starboard was as still as a lonely grave. In this harsh hill country any survivors would have made sure to stay close to the wreck, shooting flares and awaiting rescue, unless someone had already killed them all. That said raiders to Will.

  He had called for action stations as soon as they’d spotted the wreck of what had to be the Raja Goh. When no attack came immediately, he’d ordered them to slow and make a landing approach on the wreck site. Although the skies looked clear of traffic, a camouflaged sky raider could strike with the man-made lightning of a coil cannon from any line of sight. Rockets really weren’t a concern until close range as a coil cannon could spread its fire to intercept most projectiles in mid-flight, destroying them. Will had hoped that he could trick the raiders into revealing themselves by Wind Dancer appearing to come in fat and happy. Dancer’s electronics and engines were battle- hardened better than most ships. They could take an electrical strike or two, without worry, especially with the side gun-ports sealed up as Will had ordered.

  Modern airship−to−airship fighting was seen as more of a battle of endurance than a battle of maneuver; the ship that hit first and hit hardest usually won. Coil cannon made that first punch. While not as vulnerable as a grounded target would be to its massive electrical bolts, a coil cannon strike was still deadly to airships. The first coil strike would usually only cause a ship to be wreathed in a discharge like St. Elmo’s fire. The bigger danger was that it would destroy the more delicate electronics and engines of a ship, leaving it to float helplessly by its air cells while an attacker closed in. Most merchants did not bother to shield their systems. Extra weight cut into profit.

  If the first strike failed, repeated strikes would change a ship’s hull resistance until there was either an electrical failure of the ships systems, or a burn through of the hull itself. This was where things got tricky for a raider. It often only took one burn−through to send the hellish lightings careening through a ship to destroy it, especially if the ship was using one of the cheaper lift gas mixes that were flammable. That meant no cargo and no profit. A raider captain had to be canny and have a light touch to succeed. Still, no raider would resist the opportunity to make that first strike in hopes of having an easy target.

  Will had used that ‘conventional wisdom’ to his advantage more than once. They’d made Dancer tougher than any light cruiser had a right to be. He was confident that she could take a hit from even a dreadnought and spit right back in their eye. His train of thought was cut off as he felt the vibrations of a gun firing through the deck plates. He turned to his bridge talker, Naomi, his long hair braids whirling as he whipped his head towards her. "Who's firing?" He snapped. The ship was supposed to be buttoned down, side gun ports closed so as to give a coil strike no way to spill into the ship.

  "Port Hotchkiss gun number one reports rocket flare coming at six points to port. Gunner reports it appears to be telesmatic. They say it’s coming from the ground, Captain!” Naomi Walters sat the interphone station which linked all the ships phones and speakers though a switchboard. Though she would never give an order of her own, it was her voice that sent crew running and guns firing, as well as relaying to the bridge reports from the different stations of the ship. She was listening to such a report even as he spoke. She looked at him as she listened, her normally calm manner vanishing.

  “They are firing to intercept!”

  Will cursed himself for a fool. Telesmatics were Aetherwave guided rockets, difficult to evade or shoot down. He’d been too focused on an air attack. The ship was positioned all wrong for the coil cannon to intercept a rocket attack from the ground. Come to that, he thought wildly, there shouldn’t be anyone with that kind of firepower in this bleak wilderness! And whoe
ver heard of ground raiders attacking airships anyway? All an unarmed airship needed to do was toss a few sticks of explosive out a cargo hatch at them, and to hell with the Alliance rules against bombing.

  His body braced for the blow that he knew had to come, even as he tried to see where it came from. An explosion flowered mere yards off the port side, close enough that the ship rocked in its wake.

  "They got it by God!" Someone on the bridge exclaimed. Will knew a moment of amazement himself that they weren’t hit, shooting a ‘matic rocket out of the sky like that with one projectile gun was akin to shooting a raindrop with a peashooter. The side guns were mainly useful for ship−to−ground and ship−to−ship fighting. Whoever that gunner was, they’d just earned themselves a bottle in bonus, he vowed to himself.

  "Rocket flare to port!” One of the bridge lookouts shouted, “And another one!"

  "All port guns fire to suppress!" Will ordered. “Drop ballast, emergency ascent!" It was doubtful that they'd get so lucky again, but that gunner had had the right idea. The only hope they had now was to rise out of the range of those rockets fast. Usually, portable rockets only had a few thousand yards before they burned out. The Dancer’s gun ports snapped open and the other five Hotchkiss guns added their fire to the first, trying to throw a wall of lead between the ship and the approaching rockets. Pipes opened as the Wind Dancer’s water reserves emptied, dropping an unexpected shower on the dusty ground below. Having shrugged off her weight, the Wind Dancer’s nose pointed upwards as she climbed for the heavens, streaks of fired chasing her. It was now a race.

  Throughout the ship, people scrambled for handholds as the deck tilted unexpectedly beneath them. Drinking cups and papers slid unto floors. Will made his way across the slanted deck to grab onto the map table. His eyes met those of his First Officer, Lawrence Rogers. Rogers was already bracing himself against the other side of the table. The older man met his gaze and simply shook his head. Rogers didn’t think they were going to make it this time. Will swore softly at himself again, and grabbed the table harder, bracing himself for the impacts to come.

  For what seemed like an eternity, the bridge held its breath waiting for the explosions that would tear into the hull. With merciless regularity, Sukoto Matori at the elevation station continued counting off the feet of their ascent in a monotone, her eyes never leaving her gauge. When she called two thousand feet, Will and Rogers looked at each other over the table. Slowly Will’s face moved from grim to astonished. He broke out into the wide boyish grin that looked so incongruous beneath his blade of a nose, his teeth gleaming white against his mahogany skin.

  "I think we beat them," he said to Rogers softly.

  "Too bloody close that," Rogers agreed, expelling his own held breath. "Orders, Captain?"

  "Level off, and come about. Cannon to target those launchers,” Will said grimly. He’d finish what whoever-they-were had started.

  Rogers began issuing the orders. Rogers still used the British Air Navy’s address of ‘Mr.’ for both sexes, a habit that Will found amusing. He preferred to use people’s first names, which was more common among the Tribes’ forces, much to Rogers’ private despair. Will had to admit though that Rogers complemented his own style well, with British spit ‘n polish teamed up with American Tribal cunning. Together with Saira Brighton they had turned out the best private fighting ship on either side of the Pacific.

  Will watched in silence as the bridge crew replied smartly to Rogers’ orders, noting their responses with pride. They were a taut ship. Moments from facing being blown out of the sky, and they were still taut. Leaving Rogers to it, he crossed to the port electric lens. Dancer had three of them, and they were better than any telescope. Rather than use glass, they somehow used electricity between the two rims to magnify things. Will didn’t know more than that about how they worked, nor did he care really. He knew they were damned expensive, and he was glad for the edge they provided.

  Giving the rims a practiced twist, Will focused it on the distant movement on the ground. The image leaped sharp into a view of the attackers. They had pulled away camouflage to reveal a depression filled with horses, three launchers, and a supply wagon. He saw figures desperately racing to move bulky rockets from the wagon to the wheeled launchers. He looked closer.

  Will didn’t see any uniform on them. They looked to him to be natives who had precious little training from the way they fumbled about. They seemed to range in age from oldsters to boys barely man high, and there were enough of them that he figured he was likely looking at every male in the tribe. Will twisted the lens rims again to bring the focus tighter, and saw a figure with a beard and a long sword haranguing the others. He looked to be the local chieftain who Will guessed had probably beggared his tribe for the launchers to go air-merchant hunting. Idiot. No great loss to his people when he dies, Will thought remorselessly. Too bad the tribe was about to become much smaller due to his stupidity. He heard Naomi report that the cannon was targeting the depression holding the launchers. He nodded to himself in decision. They had tried to kill his ship, so kill them all.

  “Captain to cannon,” Will said, his voice betraying none of his feelings, “Fire as you bear, full charge.” He paused to set his goggles over his face, then continued to watch the targets on the ground. One group had dropped a rocket and were being yelled at by a sword-wielder. He faintly heard Naomi relay his orders over her phone. The light tubes dimmed as the ships impellers stopped, the entire energy of the Tesla engines thrown into the cannon for an instant.

  A bolt of man-made lightening, yards across, cracked massively from the cannon muzzle mounted at the nose of the upper hull. Even with his goggles over his eyes, Will automatically closed them, turning his face away. The all too familiar smell of ozone washed over him.

  The bolt struck at such speed that the tribesmen swarming over the supply wagons and the three horse-drawn launchers never even had time to feel death. Burning at three thousand degrees where it touched the earth, the bolt simply flashed them to carbon. Those remaining at the edges of the strike, deafened and blinded, were killed when the secondary explosions from the flash burned missiles rolled over them.

  The bridge lookout, darkened goggles over her eyes, reported the hit. This time a raucous cheer went through the bridge, and Rogers had to call for quiet. Will smiled to himself as he looked back through the lens. The bridge reaction was understandable. Not one airship in ten could say that they’d out−fought a guided rocket ambush without a scratch. They’d be using the story to buy themselves drinks in airdevil dives for a year.

  Will watched the expanding cloud on the surface. He thought he could just make out a couple of small dots riding away from the explosion, the sole survivors of their stupidity. His lips skinned back from his teeth in anger. He hoped the survivors realized what that idiot of a leader had done to them. His actions meant that the tribes’ old life was over whether they wished it or no. Even if the Company didn’t send punitive attacks, without enough men to continue on as they had, horse raising, raiding and such, they would now have to learn a new life. What a waste. They’d tried to attack the rich air trade of their neighbors as if it was an old caravan of camel riders. They probably thought they were brave, he thought disgustedly. He remembered his grandfather early on in the Great War against the Invaders.

  Standing Bear had marveled to his young grandson Will that he had lived long enough to fight the ‘metal demons’ from the sky during what the white folk called the Martian War. It had been a fight to write songs of, Standing Bear had said proudly. That was just before Standing Bear had died from the horrible burns of the Invaders’ heat rays. He had been one of the few to live even that long after those early battles of horses against the giant, many legged war machines from the sky.

  That was before the Spirit Walker Wovoka brought the Ghost Dance to the Tribes, showing them that they must all fight together. Will’s father and the rest of the First Peoples had embraced the Dance. Then they had embraced the
war science offered by the White Queen of Britain to fight the invaders. The United Tribes had joined the Alliance of Nations and had fought beside the people of many countries, across many lands. The Tribes had learned the new ways of war.

  On the battlefield, or in the sky, they became known by the Ghost Dance war cry, Ay Ay Yao, the call to the spirits to fight beside them. To judge by their victories, the spirits did. After the Alliance had defeated the Invaders, the Ghost Warriors turned what they had learned against the white governments of North America. In a short bloody war, they had pushed not only both American governments, the Union and the Confederacy, off their lands and all the way back to the Great River of the Mississippi in the East, but the British Empire as well, all the way to the Hudson’s Bay in the North. Now, Will thought grimly, now Standing Bear’s grandson, William Hunting Owl, was one of those metal demons from the sky.

  Ay Ay Yao, he snarled silently at the retreating dots on the ground. You either learn or you die, he thought, but either way it will never be the same for you. The ways of your forefathers will be no more.

  Schooling his face to look more pleased than he felt, he turned to face the bridge. The attackers were dead, his people were alive, and that was all that really mattered. He issued orders crisply as he walked back towards where Rogers stood.

  “Come about, maintain elevation. I want to do a full circle around that wreck before we go down. If there are any more goatherds with grown up toys down there, let’s smoke them out. Naomi, phone Arms-Master Brighton with my complements, and she’s to form a landing party. I will be joining them.” He pulled down his goggles and opened his fleece lined vest as he came to stand by his first officer.

  Like most airdevils, he wore layers of mis-matched clothes that could go on and off easily. Even electric heating grates couldn’t keep the temperature uniform though out a ship Wind Dancer’s size as she moved from the icy heights to close to the ground. Along with the vest, Will had a personal fondness for the supple leather pants that Tribal airdevils wore tucked into their ship boots. Without the spyglass that was holstered on his belt next to his father’s old fifty caliber revolver, there was nothing to mark him as Wind Dancer’s captain. Everyone wore a badge in the shape of the Wind Dancer’s ensign, a woman dancing in the center of a circle, done in bright brass. The only one aboard who wore anything close to a uniform was Lawrence Rogers, who somehow was always dressed in black, as if he was still in the BAN, the British Air Navy.