Chapter Text
Francis's was crowded today. A wave of noise hit Alfred as soon as he opened the door. Loud voices blended into an indistinguishable mass of sound, with jazz music just audible somewhere in the background; Francis's battered phonograph, probably. A live band would have been louder.
Stepping inside was a relief, despite the noise. They were out of the rain at last, and the air temperature was at least fifteen degrees cooler inside, and it even felt less humid. Francis had bribed, blackmailed, or seduced one of the magic workers among his clientele into setting up weather wards, and the break from the tropical heat outside was worth whatever price he'd paid for it.
It also kept the cream and gold wallpaper from peeling off the walls, the way it usually did around here. The constant humidity of the Southern Archipelago rotted fabric, warped wood, and made wallpaper paste come unglued. It made maintenance on the Eagle a bitch.
"Hey, Bonnefoy, the mail's here," Alfred called out, holding up the half-full mailbag he'd hauled all the way across the archipelago. He and Matthew always put Antillia at the end of their route, because more mail was directed toward the tiny outlying island than anywhere else except Ninguaria, the main island. Half the airship crew in the archipelago had their letters sent to them care of Francis Bonnefoy, and not just because his place always had good Armorican wine and Albian whisky behind the bar.
Alfred was always careful never to look too closely at any of the letters or packages Francis handled; ignorance probably wouldn't help him or his brother that much if they were ever hauled up in front of the Ninguarian governor or a mainland court for aiding and abetting smugglers or pirates, but it couldn't hurt.
Lovino glared at him sullenly from behind the bar, and made no move to come take possession of the mail pouch. Alfred hefted it, considering for a moment the likelihood of it causing any damage Francis would make him pay for if he threw it at his bartender's head.
Matthew snagged the bag out of his hand just as he decided that he'd probably end up taking out several whisky bottles when Lovino failed to catch it.
"He's probably in the kitchen," Matthew said. "I'll just take it back to him."
He wove his way through the tables toward the open door to the restaurant's kitchen, and Alfred turned away and started surveying the packed room, looking for an empty table. It wasn't normally this crowded in the middle of the afternoon; everyone must have seen the low barometer levels and the look of the sky and stayed in port.
They could always eat at the bar if they had too, but after two days spent island hopping, Alfred wanted to sit down somewhere where he'd have elbow room and space to stretch his legs out. The Eagle's cockpit was large enough for both a pilot and a copilot, and you could store a couple hundred pounds of cargo in the back where the passenger seats used to be, but it like most airplanes, it hadn't been designed with a six-foot tall pilot in mind.
The tables near the bar were all packed, mostly with local fishermen, though he could see Vainamoinen and Oxenstierna at one of them. The rest of their airship crew were probably here somewhere, too, unless their pilot had gotten himself thrown out again. Vainamoinen's crew were all Nordmen, fair-skinned blonds from Hreidgotaland and Kvenland, and their ship's escort pilot was the sort of wild-haired viking warrior peasants in Albion had once prayed to be spared from.
There were a pair of free tables by the back wall, but he hated sitting there; it was the darkest corner of the restaurant, and also the farthest away from the kitchen.
Maybe Francis would have those little fruit tarts tonight, or those custard things with the crunchy melted sugar on top. He'd had nothing in the plane but sandwiches, and it was already nearly three o' clock, well past lunchtime and getting close to dinner time.
"I see you finally made it in." The detestably familiar voice came from right behind him.
Alfred spun around, nearly tripping over his own feet. "Arthur," he blurted out, wincing inwardly as his voice almost cracked. "I didn't know you were in port." If he had, he would have gone somewhere else to eat and brought the mail by afterwards. He preferred to deliver his cargo first thing – Eagle Transport had a reputation to uphold – but he also preferred to avoid Arthur Kirkland whenever possible.
Now, of course, if he and Matthew went somewhere else, it would look like he was running away.
Arthur glowered up at him. He was wearing what Alfred thought of as his 'pirate captain's' coat, the long, green greatcoat with big, shiny buttons and gold trim that stayed pristine no matter how much sun and salt-water it was exposed to. Most magic-workers didn't waste power on such petty things, but Arthur had power to burn, and had always been fussy about his clothing.
His nose and cheekbones were sunburned, as usual, and splotched with freckles; if he wanted to waste magic, he should have spent some on keeping the sun off his skin rather than on his stupid coat.
"Bonnefoy's been whining about his packages all day. He didn't think you'd want to risk your precious seaplane in this weather." From the arched eyebrow and amused quirk of his mouth, Arthur clearly hadn't expected him to make it in either.
"My plane can take whatever the sea can throw at it," Alfred returned. "It's you airship guys who have to worry about a little wind."
"Anyone with brains or experience worries about storms at this time of year. I should have told Bonnefoy to stop whinging; either you'd show up, or his precious letters would be lost at sea."
"I hope you're really as good at weather wards as you say you are. I'd hate for the rest of your crew to lose their airship tonight."
Arthur's face flushed, and he took a step forward, eyes narrowing. Whatever he had been going to say – and it would have been something cutting, Alfred was sure – was forestalled by Matthew's sudden appearance.
"There you are," his brother said brightly. "Francis has a table for us. It's right over…"
Alfred followed the line of his pointing finger and saw Antonio, Francis's combination waiter, sous-chef, and bouncer, clearing off a table near the door. Right next to the table where Arthur's bratty little cabin boy was currently throwing a dinner roll at the group of overly-buttoned up Thembrians at the next table over.
Francis had a cruel sense of humor. And he liked Arthur even less than Alfred did, which was saying something.
"We're sitting there." Alfred jabbed a finger at the empty tables by the back wall, as far away from Arthur's crew as it was possible to be without sitting outside. He turned his back on Arthur and made straight for them.
"Sorry," he heard Matthew saying behind him. "It's been a long day. You know he gets when he's hungry."
Matthew, the gods only knew why, actually liked the smug pirate bastard. Or at least, he pretended to. It was hard to tell with him sometimes.
Airship pirates like Arthur Kirkland were one of the reasons no one took the Southern Archipelago's fledging government seriously. It had taken years of effort to get the islands to agree to follow any sort of unified governing body, and even now, they were more of a loosely knit confederation than anything else, nominally presided over by the governor of Ninguaria, the largest island. And as far as the outside world was concerned, the archipelago was nothing but a nest of pirates given more importance and influence than it deserved by the presence of the smoking sea's gas deposits.
The smuggling ring he was sure Francis was running was one thing – half the archipelago's commerce came from Thembrians and Thuringians circumventing their countries' trade embargoes by using local merchants as go betweens, and it did no harm to anyone involved. Attacking Albian or mainland airships, on the other hand, was going to bring somebody's air corps down on their heads someday.
Once Alfred was sitting down in a comfortable chair with a cold drink in his hand and a hot meal on the way, it was hard to stay irritated about anything. The fish stew was amazing, despite Francis's disconcerting habit of leaving entire octopus tentacles intact in it for the sake of drama. (Food, Alfred felt, did not need drama). The week's mail run was behind them, the Eagle was safely tied up at the marina, and his worry that they'd fail to beat the storm here and would have to land on a choppy sea with rain ruining visibility had been groundless.
"We'll be lucky to find a hotel for the night," Matthew said, after a long period of silence during which they wolfed down their food.
Alfred nodded, still trying to scrape up the last traces of broth from his bowl. In fair weather, airship crew tended to sleep aboard their ships – some of them rarely left their craft even in port, going weeks at a time without setting foot on solid ground. Storms like the one blowing up tonight, on the other hand, were a different story. The major weakness of airships, other than the risk of explosions if anything ignited the hydrogen gas most of them were filled with, was their tendency to break apart in high winds. Most airship wrecks not caused by piracy were due to the crafts' rigid frames buckling and the skin of their gas bags splitting during storms.
Once, shortly after he and Matthew had come to the archipelago, one of the airships tethered off Ninguaria's main harbor had been struck by lightning. The explosion had lit up the entire sky, a giant red and orange ball of flame bigger and brighter than anything he'd ever seen. No one had known whether the craft's anti-combustion wards had failed in the face of the lightning strike, or whether it had simply never had them to begin with.
"We'll pay double," he said. For a soft, clean bed that didn't move, it would be worth it. And coming in fresh off a mail run, they had the money for it.
"I thought we were saving up to pay for an engine overhaul."
"It won't cost that much," Alfred told him. "And you taking a shower will be worth it."
Matthew tried to stab him in the hand with his fork.
Alfred jerked his hand back, nearly knocking over his water glass in the process, and reached over to smack Matthew across the knuckles with the back of his spoon.
There was the sound of a throat clearing behind him.
Alfred turned in his chair, already preparing an excuse or apology for Antonio about how they weren't really fighting, and anyway, Kirkland's cabin boy had been throwing things at people.
It wasn't Francis's bouncer.
Two of the Thembrians from the table near the door were standing a few feet away, their high-collared wool coats unbuttoned in the heat. The older of the two took a step forward and held out his hand. "Kazimir Sergeyevich," he said, as Alfred automatically stood and took it. "I hear that you two have just completed a delivery. Would you be interested in taking on another commission?"
"Now?" Alfred stared at the man for a moment, before logic caught up with him and he realized that he couldn't possibly mean right now. Kazimir Sergeyevich wore wire-rimmed glasses similar to Alfred's own, and had a receding hairline that he'd tried to compensate for by slicking his hair across his head with hair oil. He was pasty pale, obviously a newcomer to the islands.
His companion, younger, taller, and dressed in a grey shirt that fastened at the side and tall boots, looked more at home here, despite his more traditional clothing. He was tanned, with sunbleached hair that said that he'd spent long hours outdoors in the heat.
You'd think he'd have learned by now to ditch the heavy coat.
"You must leave immediately," the younger man said. "We cannot wait until storm is over. Our delivery is too important."
"You're going to have to wait." Alfred smiled at him cheerfully to soften the refusal. He hated to turn down a job, but from the looks of the sky outside, not to mention the marina's barometer, there was no other choice. "It'll probably blow over quickly."
Kazimir Sergeyevich shook his head, smiling tightly. "It must be done tonight – the package must be at the Thembrian consulate on Ninguaria by dawn. A great deal depends on it, and it is already late."
"Good luck finding someone crazy enough to take it there tonight." Matthew was still seated, eyeing the two Thembrians speculatively. "You don't know much about planes, do you mister?"
"We would hire boat, but no one here will sail beyond sight of land." The younger Thembrian snorted. "Superstitious fools."
"You obviously haven't seen the sea life around here yet," Matthew said dryly. "There are octopus out in the deep water with tentacles the size of you." And they were aggressive sons of bitches, too. They liked to attack fishing boats, usually at the end of the day when the fishermen had the largest catch, and the teeth around the edges of their suckers left circular gouges nearly an inch in diameter in the wood.
No one in the archipelago would take a boat into deep water. It was the main reason why Eagle Transport did so well; there was little in the way of competition.
"We are willing to pay extra to compensate you for the risk." Sergeyevich smiled. "A great deal extra."
How much – no, taking off again tonight would be just plain stupid. "Nobody's going to take you up on that offer, Mr. Sergeyevich," Alfred advised him. "Not on a night like tonight."
Sergeyevich raised his eyebrows, looking both disappointed and faintly surprised. "We had heard that you were the one pilot who might be willing." He shrugged slightly, his expression turning resigned. "Well, I suppose it's to be expected. The weather does look very bad, and Captain Kirkland was most insistent that you wouldn't be willing to take on the job. "
"Someone was having a joke at our expense," Matthew said. "Or telling you tall tales. My brother's a good pilot, and the Eagle's a solid old kite, but-"
"How much extra are you talking about?" Alfred asked.
***
Even from a good distance away, the Iron Cross looked very big. And very high up. The airplane Feliciano could see taxiing to a stop at the end of the carrier's runway, on the other hand, looked small and rickety and not at all like something he was certain he wanted to go flying in.
When he'd first been told that he was being transferred from the surface navy to one of the Thuringrike's airships, Feliciano had been excited. A little confused, since being airship crew was more prestigious than being a sailor, and his three months of service on the Thetis had not gone well, but pleased. He couldn't be as much of an unqualified disaster as Werner had said if they were sending him to an airship.
They had originally assigned him to work as part of the ship's maintenance crew, but then he'd forgotten to do a couple of things – not very many! - and lost several tools, and they'd pulled him off maintenance duty and had him on cleaning duty, which he'd been much better at that except for that one time when he'd left a pool of water behind while mopping a hallway and one of the officers had slipped and sprain his ankle. But that had only happened once, and he'd worked really hard, and now it had paid off.
Leutnant Werner was apparently the one who'd put his name up for the transfer, which meant he must have forgiven him for the ankle!
Feliciano watched the airplane's propeller shudder to a halt, and reminded himself that he was really very lucky to get this opportunity, and that he ought to still be excited. Airships almost never exploded these days, except during battle.
He'd heard that the northern theater saw a lot of action. And the Iron Cross, stationed in the Nordic Straights and over the North Sea, would be right in the thick of it.
He'd hoped to finish out the two years of his conscription and go home without ever having to see a battle, much less be in one. That hope had seemed perfectly possible on the Thetis. The Thetis was stationed safely in the Ionian and Central Seas, where no one had fought a naval battle of any size since Ionia and Armorica had been absorbed into the Thuringrike. Thuringia and its subordinate kingdoms weren't currently at war with Ophir and no ship smaller than a full-blown battleship was ever sent into the southern archipelago, pirates or not, so all Feliciano had had to worry about were storms, emergency drills, and the blisters he got doing punishment duty after he made mistakes in the emergency drills.
Now, he'd be right on the front lines, facing Thembrian airships and warplanes, and-- He cut that train of thought off. He would just have to do his best. It had been good enough on the Thetis, or they wouldn't have sent him here, so it would be good enough on the Iron Cross.
And he got to ride an airplane up to the airship, because they couldn't land just to pick up one person. He was excited! Really! It wasn't scary at all.
His pilot was climbing out of the airplane now, bundled up head to toe so thoroughly that no skin was visible – along with his leather jacket and helmet, he wore flying goggles and a white scarf pulled up over his face so that even that was hidden.
He'd heard that it was cold at high altitudes; it must be true.
Feliciano drew himself up to his full height and saluted; Thuringrike Flying Corp pilots were always officers. "Seaman Vargas, reporting for duty, sir."
The pilot stopped a few feet away from him and saluted back, a much crisper salute than Feliciano's. "Hauptmann Beilschmidt. Welcome to-" he broke off, leaning forward a little and cocking his head to one side. The dark-tinted goggles covered his eyes, but Feliciano could almost feel the man staring at him.
Was his uniform jacket too crumpled? Had one of his buttons come undone? Had he lost a button? He glanced down to check – no, everything looked all right – and then the pilot started to cackle with laughter, the sound vaguely familiar even muffled by his scarf.
"God's missing eye, Felicia! Felix. Whatever your name is. Roderich's little cousin!" He reached up to pull down his scarf and yanked off his leather flying helmet, revealing tousled white hair and a wicked-looking scar stretching the entire length of his right cheek. "What are you doing here?"
Feliciano blinked at him, trying to remember which of his cousin Roderich's friends had had a face full of dueling scars, and then it clicked. White hair. Cackling laugh. Ludwig's older brother, the one who'd always been dragging his best friend off away from him to go hunting or fishing or do something else Feliciano had been "too young" to do. He'd gotten into a fistfight with Roderich and broken his glasses, and then Roderich's fiancée had given him a black eye.
He hadn't had the scar then, of course; he'd been fourteen, and Felicano had been seven, about to turn eight. Ludwig had been nearly ten, just enough older than Feliciano to seem experienced and worldly, but still young enough to be willing to play with him.
"Gilbert!" Feliciano grinned, and resisted the urge to hug the other man. He was still an officer, and you didn't hug officers. "I haven't seen you in years! This is great. I thought I'd be all alone up here and not know anybody and now you're here."
"You remembered me." Gilbert smirked, reaching up to pull his goggles off. "Of course you did. No one ever forgets me."
His eyes were blood red. Feliciano nearly jumped back in surprise, and might have actually gasped or squeaked. He wasn't sure, though. Red. Not from broken blood-vessels, like normal eyes after a long night up drinking or from a bad eye infection – Gilbert's irises were as red as Feliciano's were brown.
He definitely hadn't had those when they were kids. He'd had sort of colorless pale blue eyes, and squinted a lot, like someone who really needed glasses but never wore them.
"Aren't they great?" Gilbert closed his eyes and tapped an eyelid with one finger. Spidery pink scars covered each eyelid. It looked painful, almost worse than the red eyes themselves. "They won't let you be a pilot unless you have perfect vision, so I got one of the sorcerer's corps guys to put a weirding on them for me. I can see perfectly, and they turned this awesome color. One of the aircrew makes a sign against the evil eye every time he sees me. It's hilarious."
"That's… good," he said. If Gilbert was happy about his creepy eyes, then Feliciano supposed maybe they didn't look that bad.
"So what did you do to get set up here?"
"Do?"
Gilbert nodded. "Nobody's sent to the far north station unless they fucked up somehow," he said. "What did you do?"
"I… nothing!" Feliciano protested. "I thought I'd been doing well. Except for the spilled water and Leutnant Werner's ankle, but that was an accident!"
Gilbert snickered. "Yeah, that sounds familiar."
"Well, what did you do?" That sounded a little too belligerent, so he tried to soften it. "You look like a good pilot – you landed without crashing and everything."
A shrug. "You get in one duel too many, and suddenly nobody cares how many airships you've shot down. They decided they had to 'make an example' of me. Plus, Beilschmidt is not a popular name."
"So they sent me here as a punishment?" Not a reward or a sign of approval after all. And he'd been trying so hard.
"Well, we did lose a couple of guys recently. They might have just thought we needed more manpower."
"Oh. I'm sure that was it." Lose a couple of guys? Gilbert said it so casually that it sounded almost as if they had just wandered off somewhere and gotten misplaced. "Is there a lot of fighting? I'm not very good with guns."
"We don't use guns. Not on airships." Gilbert eyed him for a moment, then asked, "Do you smoke?"
"Yes?" Not as much as Lovino had.
Gilbert grinned at him. "Not anymore. Cigarettes are banned onboard airships. Too much risk of starting a fire. Do you want me to delay long enough for you to have one last smoke? I could find some kind of mechanical problem."
"No, that's okay. I don't want to be late." He was going to make a good impression this time, not like the Thetis. Maybe they hadn't wanted him in the surface navy, and maybe he'd been a bad sailor, but that didn't mean he couldn't be a good airship crewman. It wasn't really a punishment at all, he decided.
It was going to be his second chance.
There couldn't be too much fighting if airship crews didn't even carry guns. The men the Iron Cross had lost could have gotten sick, or deserted.
Gilbert was eying him again, more closely this time. "How much do you weigh?"
Feliciano shrugged. "I don't know. My bag isn't very heavy, though." He waved at the small canvass bag by his feet, which was all the navy had let him bring.
"You're built like a little girl, so you have to weigh less than me." He nodded toward the airplane, still crouched menacingly a few yards away. A set of metal bars topped with a large hook protruded from the top of the upper wing, ugly and ungainly. Just behind the wings was an open hole in the body of the pane, with absolutely nothing to stop someone inside from falling out. "You get to sit up front."
"Don't touch the stick," he said a few minutes later, once Feliciano had climbed over the plane's lower wing and up into the open cockpit. "And keep your feet off the rudder pedals. And don't touch the throttle – that's that knob there – or the radio, or the-- look, just don't touch anything."
Feliciano nodded – not that Gilbert could see him, since he was sitting in plane's back seat, directly behind him – and planted both feet firmly on the floor, hands gripping his knees. He had to keep them spread wide to keep from accidentally brushing against the control stick, but not so wide that the outside of his knee would knock into the throttle-knob. The cockpit was tiny, barely big enough for the two seats it held. It was a little deeper than it had looked at first, though, and Feliciano took comfort in the fact that the edges of the cockpit came all the way up to his shoulders; that would make it harder for him to fall out.
There was a harness to hold him in place, but it didn't seem like that much security when they were going to be so high up, with nothing but open air under them.
"Put these on. Sometimes oil blows back from the engine."
A leather helmet and pair of goggles were dangled over his right shoulder, and he had to let go of his knee to reach up for them. He expected them to be dark-tinted, like Gilbert's, but they were clear, and not as uncomfortable as they looked. In spite of himself, Feliciano felt a little thrill of excitement as he adjusted them over the bridge of his nose, and he wished for a moment that the panel full of gauges in front of him had something reflective on it, so he could see what he looked like dressed like a dashing pilot.
Then one of the carrier's deck crew came forward to start the propeller, and a roar of noise obliterated anything else Gilbert might have said.
They were moving forward now, and Feliciano tried to sit very still and not touch anything. He couldn't see where they were going, only the wing overhead and the nose of the plane in front of him – how far was the edge of the deck? They hadn't lifted off yet, they were going to run right off the end and crash into the water, and—
With a violent jolt, the plane slammed forward, the deck dropped out from under them, and just as he was certain they were both going to die, they were going up, the ship shrinking under them and the waves getting smaller and smaller until they turned into tiny wrinkles.
It was… kind of fun. And pretty. Incredibly pretty.
Feliciano sat up straighter, trying to lean over far enough to get a good look at the ocean below them. He could actually see the Thuringian coastline in the distance, a grey-green blur – or was that Hreidgotaland?
He ought to draw this. He hadn't been able to bring any of his paints, but there were always pencils, and this kind of view deserved to be immortalized. He stared intently at the distant coastline, the toy-sized boat, the tiny crinkle-waves, trying to memorize it all so that he could draw it later.
Wait, no. He was going to be on an airship. He'd be able to see everything from this high up all the time.
It was even louder now, wind howling around them; he tried to shout to Gilbert, to ask why they were flying away from the Iron Cross instead of towards it, and then the entire plane tilted over to the side and they began turning around.
It was huge. Easily as big as the ship they'd just left, its massive grey sides painted with the red eagle symbol of the Thuringrike. He'd expected it to be rounder, like a balloon, but it was more of a long cigar-shape, its metal ribs pressing visibly against its fabric skin. Like the wings of Gilbert's airplane, only really, really big.
Underneath the giant gas bag, the gondola that held the crew looked tiny, too small to hold the fifty to seventy men airship crews could contain.
"Where are we going to land?" he shouted. "Is there a runway on top?"
Gilbert didn't answer; he probably couldn't even hear him. He might not have said anything even if he had. He could be a little mean sometimes, Feliciano remembered. That had been a long time ago, though. Now that they were adults, he'd probably outgrown it.
Maybe they weren't going to land. Maybe he was going to have to climb out of the plane and up some kind of rope ladder.
If that were the case, he would be brave, and climb the rope ladder like a soldier. They were over water, not land. If he fell, he might still be okay.
They were under the airship now, so close that he couldn't see the curved sides anymore, just the huge underside overhead, blocking out the sunlight. There was a cross-shaped hole opening up in its base, behind the gondola.
Where they going to fly up inside the airship? That seemed… dangerous.
The underside of the airship was only a dozen or so yards above them now, and crewmen were visible inside the opening, lowering some kind of metal framework. It looked sort of like a giant, metal trapeze, and Feliciano looked from it to the big, metal hook mounted on top of the airplane's upper wing, and then closed his eyes.
He gripped his knees so hard that it hurt, and tried to concentrate on remembering to breathe.
Could Gilbert even see the bar from behind him? Why wasn't he sitting up front?
The plane jolted, and Feliciano opened his eyes in spite of his determination not to. If they were about to die, he needed to see.
The engine cut off, and for a moment, the airplane just hung there terrifyingly. Then the entire metal framework they were hanging from started to rise again, lifting them up into the airship.
Huge metal ribs curved up around them, almost disappearing into the darkness overhead. Giant metal girders braced them together at intervals, criss-crossing the middle of the ship like the spokes of a wheel. Dozens of wheels, marching off into the distance.
The plane stopped rising with a shuddery little jerk and rotated to the side, coming to a stop next to another plane. There were four of them in here, he saw, counting the one he was sitting in. No, five. There was another one off to the right, a double-headed raven painted on its nose indicating that it belonged to the leader of a hunting squadron.
Five planes, and they filled less than a quarter of the cavernous space.
Something jabbed him in the back of the head. "You can get out now, Airman Vargas."
"It's so big," he said. "I didn't think it would be so… where is the gas?" They were still breathing air, not suffocating on hydrogen.
"The gas cells are in the walls."
Gilbert was shouting, Feliciano realized – they both were, the roar of the plane's engine still ringing in his ears. He could still hear engine noise from somewhere, but it was muffled and far away.
How did this harness come undone? There were so many buckles, all connecting together at his waist, and no matter how hard he tugged, it wouldn't come loose.
Gilbert leaned over his shoulder, squashing Feliciano into the seat, and pressed down on part of the central buckle. The entire thing came apart.
"Oh," Feliciano said. "So that's how you do it."
"You're late, Hauptmann." The deep, commanding voice came from outside the plane.
Gilbert climbed off him and swung down from the plane and onto a metal catwalk in one smooth movement that Feliciano wasn't sure he was going to be able to copy. He saluted, back perfectly straight and heels clicking together, and a completely unmilitary grin on his face. "Guess who I found down below?"
"You could at least try to address me as Korvettenkapitän, Hauptmann Beilschmidt," the other man said dryly. "Or sir."
Feliciano swallowed hard, forcing down his nervousness. This was his new captain. He was going to be calm. Soldierly. Make a good impression. Getting out of the plane couldn't be that hard; Gilbert had made it look easy. He'd climb out, and then he'd salute and introduce himself as properly as he could, and the korvettenkapitän would be pleased with him.
"What are you going to do, Lutz," Gilbert drawled, "take away my hunting squadron and send me to the North Sea?"
"I'll think of something."
He didn't sound angry, despite how disrespectful Gilbert was being. Feliciano hoped that was a sign of a forgiving nature, not like the kind of man who'd hold grudges about spilled water and sprained ankles. He hoisted himself out of the airplane's cockpit, careful not to look down, and let himself dangle over the side for a moment before he let go and dropped down to the catwalk below. There. Nice and graceful, and he hadn't put his foot through the lower wing.
He turned around, took a step forward, and the strap of his bag caught on one of the plane's wing wires.
Feliciano went sprawling, flying forward and landing face down on the catwalk, with his nose inches from his new commanding officer's boots. His very shiny boots.
Ow. Ow, ow, ow, he'd bitten his tongue. And his knees and elbows were numb.
He pushed himself up to his knees and saluted, smiling hopefully up at the man. "Airman Vargas, reporting for duty, sir."
Ludwig Beilschmidt stared down at him, toweringly tall and broad-shouldered, his face blank with surprise. "Felicia?" he blurted out.
***
The wind was slackening off; they were starting to actually make headway now, instead of the snail's-pace crawl they'd been moving at before. It had stopped raining nearly an hour ago, but the wind was the real problem. That, and the fuel they were beginning to run low on.
"This was a terrible idea. You've had stupid ideas before, but this one's the stupidest you've ever had in our entire lives."
"You're not helping," Alfred muttered. His arms ached from fighting to keep the Eagle steady amidst a non-stop headwind and the cross-winds from Hel, their fuel tanks were only a quarter full, and he wasn't entirely certain where they were.
That was supposed to be Matthew's job, but he was more interested in complaining than in making any attempt at computing their airspeed, time travelled, and the number of degrees off course the crosswinds had blown them. By day, navigation in the archipelago was easy, with at least one island always visible somewhere on the horizon. But dark had fallen only an hour into their flight, and at night, in the pitch-blackness of a storm with the eerie light of phosphorescence visible from the waves below, all they had was a compass, an altimeter and airspeed indicator, and dead reckoning.
"Was it just me, or did the foreigners willing to pay a small fortune to get their unidentified cargo transported through the middle of a tropical storm seem suspicious. It was probably just me. Sorry. Ignore me. You usually do."
Matthew was in full-blown passive aggressive bitch mode. It was making Alfred's head hurt, or maybe that was the hour. He should have gotten some sleep before taking off. Or insisted on waiting until the storm had blown itself out. It had only lasted a few hours, not as long as he'd feared, and if they'd just been leaving now…
But their client had mentioned Arthur's doubts, and that kind of slur on Alfred's guts and flying skills was impossible to take lying down. Even if he maybe should have let it pass.
His reputation was on the line, he reminded himself. Once the waves died down, they could land just long enough to refuel from one of the gasoline canisters Matthew kept in the back. The sun wouldn't be up for several hours, which left them plenty of time to re-orient themselves and still make it to the main island by breakfast time. A little bit late, yeah, but still quicker than any other transport pilots in the archipelago could have done it.
"It's probably got something to do with the war," he said, squinting at the luminescent paint of the airspeed indicator. Nearly eighty knots now. Ha, take that, headwind. Alfred Jones and the mighty Sea Eagle have defeated you!
"Which is why we should have stayed out of it."
"For that kind of money? A hero never backs down from a challenge, Matty."
Matthew muttered something under his breath – all Alfred caught was the word "moron."
"Who cares if the Thembrians want to ship guns or bombs or something north to blow up some blood eagles? Let them kill the warmongering bastards."
"Like Imperial Thembria's any better?"
"They're the ones paying us, and they're farther away from the islands."
Matthew didn't have a comeback to that one.
The main island was just visible on the horizon now – at least, that's what Alfred was pretty sure that dark smudge was. He reminded himself to point out to Matthew later that upgrading from their original little three-seater seaplane to the Eagle had proven more than worth it tonight. The twin-engine flying boat had cost over five times what Eagle Transport's original little mail plane had, and they were still paying off the last of the purchase price, but it had three times the range, could carry over four thousand pounds of cargo, not counting fuel weight, and its huge, fourteen cylinder radial engines were some of the most advanced in the world. And its metal-clad fuselage and wings had held together through the storm winds, which would have ripped the wood-and-fabric seaplane apart.
It took longer to get into the air, but the entire point of a seaplane was that you had all the runway you could ever want.
"Do we have any radio reception yet?" He asked. "We should tell the Ninguaria marina we're coming." He was sure it was Ninguaria up ahead. He must have done an even better job compensating for their sideslip than he'd thought.
"I think that's New Servage," Matthew named the island several miles east of Ninguaria.
"A dollar says it's Ninguaria." Alfred looked down at the fuel gauges again – the left tank was lower than the right, and he was about to complain to Matthew that he wasn't balancing them properly when the clouds ahead finally parted to reveal a nearly full moon, and his brother said,
"Watch it; there's an airship at ten o' clock."
An airship? In this weather? They were either suicidal or… he couldn't think of any other alternatives.
The airship's bulk loomed up out of the darkness, ahead and to the left of them. It was small, as airships went - the big warships of Imperial Thembria and the Thuringrike were the size of a naval battleship - but it still dwarfed their plane. And it was close, close enough to be in danger of blocking their flight path.
Good thing Matthew had sharp eyes. He wore the same glasses Alfred did, but spotting other aircraft wasn't just about how far you could see; Alfred had known men with twenty-twenty vision who seemed utterly oblivious to what else occupied their airspace.
Speaking of which… Light flashing off something in motion in the sky above them caught his eye, and he looked up to see another plane, one of the small biplanes that some airships carried for reconnaissance and as defense against pirates.
The radio emitted a crackle of static, and then a vaguely familiar voice came through.
"Sea Eagle. This is the Nordic Confederation airship King Gustav. We know you're carrying Thembrian military cargo. We request that you land and prepare to hand it over, or you will be shot down."
No wonder the Thembrians had wanted their cargo transported immediately – it must be either highly valuable or strategically important, or both, for Vainamoinen's crew to go to this much trouble. They had to have flown through the storm to get here, using their magic-worker's power to keep their airship intact and speed their way.
"I thought you wanted the crate. That'll destroy it." He said it automatically, then belatedly realized that being a smart-ass to Mathias Køhler was usually not a good idea. It only encouraged him.
There was a brief pause, and then Køhler could clearly be heard saying, "Lukas, help me out here."
"Land," Lukas's voice said flatly. "Or you will be shot down. Better to see it destroyed than in Thembrian hands."
They could do it, Alfred knew. Køhler 's plane might be smaller than the Sea Eagle, but it would be armed with a machine gun, while their own plane was defenseless. And the lighter fighter plane could outperform the heavier Sea Eagle – with the airship in front of them, they couldn't reach the island's harbor to dock, and with Køhler overhead, fleeing back to the open ocean wasn't a surefire escape either.
"No way," he said. "I took a commission to deliver this crate. It's a sacred charge."
"Just do it," Matthew hissed. "We can give the money back.
Alfred glared at him. "Hell no." He didn't back down from bullies, whether they were pirates or Nordmenn privateers. Forget the money – they'd given their word to deliver the crate, with their reputations riding on the line if they didn't.
Tracer bullets flashed brightly against the dark sky as the biplane fired a burst from its machine gun. Most of the fire went wide, off to their left, but Alfred could distinctly hear – and feel – the impact as the last few bullets hit the Sea Eagle's left wing.
"You're paying to repair that!" he shouted.
"Next time I won't miss," Køhler said. "Come on, I like you boys. Don't make me shoot you again."
"I liked you, too," Matthew said – thankfully not with his radio button depressed. "I think I'm changing my mind."
They could try to run, but with little more than fumes left in their fuel tanks, they'd end up landing in the ocean after only a few miles. And then the Nordmenn would overtake them again, while they were sitting ducks on the water.
On the water in the open ocean, where things nearly as dangerous as hostile aircraft would be coming up from the depths again now that the storm was over.
The air rippled off to their right, and a second airship appeared out of the night. Literally appeared, its grey bulk materializing out of nowhere.
Alfred swore. Only one airship in the archipelago had a magic worker strong enough to cloak them from sight that way.
The Ariel opened fire, the guns in its gondala strafing Mathias's plane. They didn't aim at the other airship. No one ever fired at an airship at close range; the risk of getting caught in the resulting explosion was too great.
Just firing guns loaded with phosphorous tracer from on board was a risk most airship captains wouldn't have taken, but Arthur Kirkland had an advantage that even his magic couldn't equal – his airship was built Albian-style, filled with inert helium instead of highly flammable hydrogen.
And now Alfred was going to have to be grateful to him.
"Back off, Berwald, Tino. This one's mine."
"I don't need your help!" Alfred snapped.
"Actually…" Matthew said, hesitantly, "we kind of do. The fuel levels are dropping really fast. I think there's a leak in one of the fuel tanks."
Great. Just great. Well, at least they hadn't blown up.
On the radio, Arthur was still talking, his smug superiority carrying through clearly even over a bad transmission. "Well, if you'd prefer to crash, bail out, and then have my crew pluck you out of the water, that's fine, too, but this way you get to keep your plane."
"What way?"
"Dock, you idiot, before Vash actually has to shoot someone."
Dock? Alfred stared at the Ariel – larger than the Nordic vessel, but surely not large enough to hold a twin-engine cargo plane like the Sea Eagle. Even the big Thuringian and Thembrian military airships only carried small parasite fighters.
"You're either crazier than I thought, old man, or you want to kill us both."
"Our ship's roomier than it looks. You'll fit."
"We don't have a hook installed."
"What in Hel do you think you're doing, Kirkland?" Køhler shouted. "We were here first!"
"You don't need one," Arthur said, as if the interruption hadn't even occurred. "Just fly under the open trapdoor, and I’ll lift you up."
And trust Kirkland's magic not to just drop them into the sea when they cut their engines. Or to work at all; he'd never heard of magic being able to actually cause things to happen – wards always prevented things, whether it was fire, the effects of bad weather, the gas inside an airship's gas bag expanding too far and tearing it open, or being seen by unwanted eyes.
Matthew was making frantic motions at the fuel gauge.
"Fine," Alfred muttered. He repeated it, more loudly, for Arthur's benefit. "Fine. This better work, Arthur."
The entire process was unnatural enough to make his skin itch. Matching their speed to the Ariel was easy enough, even in the near-dark – airships were slow, but luckily not too slow for the Sea Eagle to keep pace with them. Flying so closely underneath the airship set off all his internal alarm bells, as he forced himself not to pull away, dive, bank to the side, anything to avoid a collision.
And then the surely-far-too-small hanger doors opened in the bottom of the airship, and Arthur's magic took over. The Sea Eagle rose vertically, the movement completely unnatural, and it took everything he had to take his hands off the controls and not fight to restore the plane to normal flight.
Beside him, Matthew was biting his lip, both his hands drawn into his chest and balled into fists to keep them away from the co-pilot's yoke.
At least he wasn't the only one who found this disturbing.
The entire plane shuddered, the top of the canopy clanking hard against something in a way that made Alfred wince, and the doors below them began to close. Over the radio, he could hear Køhler swearing at them in Hreidgotlander.
For a long minute, he and Matthew just sat there. The inside of the airship was cavernous, the Sea Eagle's wingspan fitting inside it with feet to spare on either side. He'd always thought the gas cells would take up more room.
Matthew was the first to unstrap himself from his seat and get up. "I'm going to check the left wing."
Alfred nodded, unfastening his own harness. There would be something to stand on outside. The plane wouldn't just be hovering in space.
It couldn't be. Even Arthur didn't have that much power.
It had always puzzled him, what someone with Arthur Kirkland's magical abilities was doing flying a pirate ship in the Southern Archipelago, practically at the edge of civilization.
There was a metal catwalk running alongside the airplane, below and slightly to the right. Alfred straightened his spine, refused to think too hard about what was holding the Sea Eagle up, and stepped out on to it.
Some kind of large metal plate, he saw, when he looked back at his plane. The top of the fuselage was stuck to it as firmly as firmly as if it were a giant magnet, but whatever force was holding it together had to be something else entirely. The Sea Eagle's compass had been behaving normally.
The catwalk stretched away in front of them for over a dozen yards, until it met the top of the ship's gondola. It should have been dark, but a faint, sourceless illumination lit everything around them, leaving no shadowed corners anywhere.
This whole situation just kept getting creepier. Weather wards and anti-combustion wards were among the miracles of modern life. This kind of magic, on the other hand, was too much like the way the empty water at the center of the archipelago glowed on moonless nights. Oppressive. Unnatural.
The door set into the roof of the gondola swung open, and Kiku, Arthur's first mate, climbed out onto the catwalk. Xiao Chun followed behind him, almost indistinguishable from a boy with her short hair and men's work overalls.
Then Arthur appeared.
He wasn't wearing the coat, despite the cold temperature inside the hanger bay. He looked somehow smaller without it, his shoulders less broad.
Alfred squared his shoulders and pulled his leather flying helmet off, resisting the urge to run a hand over his hair to smooth it down.
Matthew stepped forward, smiling and holding out his hand. "Thanks for the help."
Arthur ginned back at him. "You're welcome. Now," he pulled a pistol from the holster at his thigh – probably a .22, small enough for ricochets to do as little damage to the interior of the airship as possible – and aimed it directly at Alfred, "hand over your cargo."
Kiku had drawn his sword, two feet of naked steel gleaming faintly in the creepy, sourceless light. Beside him, Xiao Chun had produced a pair of small, handle-less knives.
Matthew took a step backward, looking far more surprised than he ought to have. "You said you'd help us!" he accused.
"Oh, come on," Alfred told him. "You didn't see this coming?"
Arthur, damn him, was still grinning that smug grin. "I said I'd help you. I didn't say that help would be free."
***