Sexy Steampunk Babes: Chapter Seventy One

At some point during the trip William had sort of been expecting to be called in for another meeting with Yelena. If only to better explain what had occurred over the capital.

Sure, it might have been something we planned to have happen, he thought. But having someone explain the concept of an airship filled with fuel and other explosives going up and actually seeing it happen are two very different things.

Yet that hadn’t happened. Oh, he’d certainly got a few orb calls from other nobles in the fleet asking about what exactly had just happened – calls in which he’d been both happy and obligated to tell them it was ‘classified’ – but Yelena herself hadn’t seen fit to pass comment. Nor had Griffith.

Tyana had called him to ask if the feat could be repeated, which had surprised him a little, but he’d been forced to admit that it was a little too cost prohibitive to use under normal circumstances.

It really had been the perfect storm of events. He’d had an excess of fuel and other explosives he couldn’t reasonably transport. He also had access to a number of airships that were designed to be watertight. Finally, the enemy hadn’t been expecting it.

Now, a kamikaze airship would always be a threat – but any Admiral worth her salt would respond to one by spreading out rather than clumping around it like what had happened over Lindholm.

Honestly, they’d not exactly been given the chance to tally the number of losses the North took from that one explosion, in Shards or airships, but William had to imagine it was significant.

The complete and total loss of at least three airships would be a problem for them. Usually, provided the hull was at least remotely intact, a ship could generally be recovered.

Less so when the component parts of a vessel are spread over a few square miles, he thought.

As had been the case for at least two of the Northern ships – if not more. And the less said about the Shards that had attempted to fall in nearby the better.

Finally, and most importantly for the North, they wouldn’t even be able to recover the Trojan Horse’s core.

An airship could expect to remain aloft for at least a few minutes sans its core, given the deleterious effects of aether tended to be mitigated when it was present in sufficient quantities – like an airships aether ballasts – and as such the last task of the diving suit clad palace guard who’d been piloting the craft had been to evacuate with said core.

Which… would have been difficult given the ship had been filled with fuel at the time and as such visibility would have been poor to say the least. Still, if she managed to do so before the ship went up in flames, she’d then have to glide down to the city on her suit’s aether ballasts.

Then the actual hard part of her job was to begin.

Which would involve escaping a city under occupation and making her way South – all while keeping the airship core hidden from the Northern occupation force.

Not exactly a small task, but one Yelena had assured him the woman she’d chosen would be up to.

Which made him more and more sure that the primary role of her Palace Guard was not so much guarding her person so much as spying on, assassinating, and sabotaging her enemies.

He shook his head.

“You seem to be thinking hard,” Olzenya opined from her position on the Jellyfish’s captain’s chair. “And that worries me.”

The bridge of the vessel was relatively quiet as the fleet made the final leg of their journey. Apparently they’d just entered Summerfield airspace and would be coming up on the seat of the Duchy momentarily.

They’d also just received some rather sad news that Lady Summerfield had finally passed away but a few days ago. And if that was a coincidence, William would eat his own foot. No, he had little doubt one of Yelena’s invisible guards had had a role to play there.

She wanted the succession crisis over and done with as soon as possible – not cropping up at an inconvenient moment.

Of course, that response had had the rather amusing side effect of Verity trying to offer her condolences to him – right up until he explained that his mother was the Countess of Ashfield. Lady Summerfield was the Duchess of Summerfield and House Ashfield’s liege lady.

Though he would privately admit that he could understand the confusion.

Ashfield. Summerfield. Redwater. New Haven. Greygrass. Blackstone. Crownlands. Southshore, he thought.

Creative, the names of the many countships and duchies were not. Though given they’d mostly been made by Imperial Navy scouts literally flying over places and picking out the most visually distinctive characteristics of the region, that made some sense.

Sure, they could have just adopted the names the existing Human and Orcish populaces used and translated them to the Elvish tongue Lindholm currently used – but in typical Elvish fashion they instead just chose to rename everything.

Poorly.

“That you’re obviously still thinking and not answering means I’m getting more worried by the moment,” his high elven teammate prompted.

He shook his head, chuckling ruefully. “You shouldn’t be. Mostly I’m just thinking about how quiet the last few days have been. Some part of me was expecting to be spending this entire trip under Yelena’s interrogation after ‘Operation Trojan Horse’. I’ve mostly just been helping fix up the Corsairs we recovered.”

A task that was significantly easier than making new craft, given the magic in the metal ‘remembered’ its old shape, which meant the Jellyfish would soon have a full complement of aircraft once more.

Olzenya rolled her eyes. “I still have no idea where you got that name from – but I can guess.”

He supposed she could, now that she knew he was harrowed. Though given it was still a secret to the public at large and they were on a crowded bridge, he made a mental note to remind her to keep her references to it as small as possible.

Even if her current one was rather oblique to begin with.

The last thing he needed was for his future in-laws – or his betrothed – to find out he was technically insane prior to him tying the knot.

Was that wrong of him? Undoubtedly, but given everything else he’d done and planned to do, lying to secure a more advantageous political match barely even registered.

“And as for interrogations, well, you said you explained your plan to them prior to it happening, right?” she continued.

“I did.”

“Alright, so why do you think they’d start hounding you about it if they knew what was going to happen?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know, I just thought they might be surprised or something when it actually worked. There’d be little shock. Maybe some awe. Then they’d start demanding I explain it in more detail.”

Admittedly there’d been a lot of that amongst the captains and crews of the fleet, but little from the people who’d been involved in the operation. From the alchemists to his own team, the reaction to the massive explosion had been decidedly nonplussed.

“Aw, are you upset that we’re getting used to your particular brand of insanity?” The High Elf smirked. “There’s only so many times you could pull off something completely beyond our conventional understanding of how the world works before we come to expect it from you. You said you were going to do something insane. Something insane happened. And it’ll happen again.”

William’s mouth opened. Then closed.

“I mean, I guess.”

“What, is your ego really that stung that us ‘primitives’ are getting used to your ‘genius’?” Olzenya asked with amusement.

“It’s not that.” He shook his head. “It’s just that if you guys are slowly getting used to my shenanigans then it means it won’t be too long before our enemies do too. And then they’ll start to adapt. They’ll start to expect the unexpected.”

The Corsair was an example of that. It was an excellent machine that he’d chosen specifically to counter the current air doctrine of this world, but it wasn’t infallible. Superior speed and firepower could be defeated with the correct positioning and a well-timed follow up. And he didn’t doubt that it wouldn’t be long before the North figured out how to do exactly that.

And while he had a lot more surprises he could pull out to keep the North off-balance – those surprises each took time to set up, and on a strategic level, would require production time.

And training programs.

And logistical chains.

Actually on that front, I need to swear that geas to Yelena the moment we touch down in Summerfield, he thought.

“Perhaps,” Olzenya allowed in a moment of surprising softness. “But remember that the entire war doesn’t rest on your noggin. If you run out of tricks? Well, I suppose we’ll just have to finish the war the old fashioned way. With blood and grit.” Then, as if remembering herself, she coughed. “Provided you don’t get us all killed in some hairbrained scheme before we reach that point.”

He laughed. “I’ll try not to. And thanks.”

She snorted, before deliberately turning her attention back to the bridge windows. “Looks like we’re coming up on Summerfield City.” She turned to her XO. “Instruct the crew to make ready for landing within the hour.”

“Aye Captain,” the ship’s XO, a former Royal Navy woman who’d once been Olzenya’s tutor and the captain of the Jellyfish in her own right, turned to speak into the ship’s enchanted communication system.

Never did catch her name, he thought.

“An hour?” he asked.

Olzenya turned to him. “Huh, sometimes I forget that you’re not a genius about everything and we’re only second years. We might only be twenty minutes out, but there’s a whole ceremony to landing as part of a fleet containing the Queen. She lands first, and Admiral Tyana will likely be next, but there’s going to be a lot of jockeying for who gets the ‘honour and privilege’ of landing after her. And a few people won’t care about that, but they will care about getting to land before their political rivals.”

William glanced out at the distant city that was growing with each passing moment – and the many visibly empty sky-docks that dominated the skyline. The skyscraper sized structures had plenty of empty berthing and connecting bridges.

And sighed. “Alright, I guess. Try to get us somewhere in the middle of the pack, if we’re going to be doing this one by one.”

Olzenya nodded and said nothing.

He settled in with the expectation he’d be suffering a boring hour of doing nothing, which meant he was pleasantly surprised when the twins bustled onto the bridge.

Something that had Olzenya clearing her throat to chastise them for, before he sent her a commiserating look and stood up, intercepting them.

“Ladies,” he smiled at his two betrotheds. “What can I do for you?”

Clarice was the first to respond, the older twin grinning at him. “We thought we might join you as we came in to land.”

Marcille nodded. “Yep. I know you’re also from a Summerfield house, but I don’t think you’ve ever visited the ducal capital, right?”

A little surprised as he’d hardly given it any thought, he shook his head. “I haven’t, no.”

“Then come on!” Marcille giggled as she grabbed his arm, tugging him out towards the door to the stairs to the deck.

Clarice was only a second slower, and he soon found himself helplessly dragged off. And as the two bustled him out onto the deck, he saw they weren’t alone in wanting to get a good view of the incoming city.

Olivia and his aunt were there, as was Verity. And so were dozens of other people. Mostly families of his contingent of workers and pilots who he’d brought along for the evacuation.

Though not all of them, he thought.

Indeed, he did see some venture out onto the deck, get one look at the view over the railing, before fleeing back indoors.

Which he didn’t really blame them for. It was a long drop and not everyone had a head for heights. As many of his ‘passengers’ had discovered over the course of the last week.

Fortunately, none of them seemed to notice that their Lord was present – for which he was thankful – as the twins moved him towards the railing. Glancing out towards the other ships in the fleet, he could just barely make out similarly excited figures standing at the railings of their own decks.

Taking his gaze away, he finally turned his attention to the city in the distance – which was growing bigger by the moment. He could even now make out individual buildings.

“It’s incredible isn’t it?” Clarice breathed. “It’s almost as big as Blicland.”

Yes, that was true, William supposed. Which was part of why he didn’t really understand why the two were so excited. To his eyes it was just a smaller version of the Royal Capital – except it didn’t have the Academy.

It was just another city.

“It’s certainly something,” he said with all the outward signs of enthusiasm.

Of course, he wasn’t so stupid as to say what he was really thinking when the girls were so excited to show it to him. Already they were pointing out differing cultural landmarks to him. Which were of equally little interest. Honestly, his only real interest was in the size of the crafting district.

However it was as he had that thought that he realized why exactly the two were so excited.

I’m an idiot, he thought. It’s going to be our city if everything goes well. Of course they’re excited to show it off.

He also realized that they’d changed clothes since he last saw them. Gone were the work aprons and grime-coated pants they’d been wearing while tinkering with the Basilisk – and in their place was the kind of formal wear one might expect to see a woman of their standing clad in.

They’d dressed up.

Of course they have, he thought. Their family will likely already be in the city waiting to meet them. Hell, my family will be there too.

He’d need to duck into his quarters for a quick change in just a few minutes if he hoped to present himself similarly, swapping out his ‘work clothes’ for something more befitting a Count.

…Fuck, he couldn’t wait to have Marline back. She’d have pointed all this out a while ago instead of letting him laser focus on getting the Jellyfish’s Corsair complement back up to full strength.

Eh, there’s still time, he thought. I’ll nip in to make a few final adjustments to that last Corsair while everyone else is jockeying for ‘landing privilege’ and then I can go get changed.

“What do you think of the castle?” Marcille asked.

He followed her gaze downward, taking in the full panorama unfolding beneath the Jellyfish’s keel. The castle she was looking at was visible now, straddling the city walls like… well, a tumour of some kind.

Yet despite that less than palatable comparison, he could freely admit that he was impressed by it.