The Rotter's Rose, 1.1

Fire billowed across the sky and adhered itself to the sails of the small airship. Shouts of distress pierced through the clouds. The steam rats were in a frenzy trying to put out the flames. If the sails burned, then they were done for. The ship would plummet to the earth as soundly as a stone. The officers, however, were possessed with a different type of tension. Frenetically, they paced the deck shouting commands and preparing for battle.

Across the chasm of clouds, Captain Arthur Asher Roberts observed the havoc securely from the starboard deck of his ship, The Rotter’s Rose. He regarded the scene with a discerning gaze, peering through his spyglass and cutting through the chaos of the moment with the type of wisdom that only came from experience.

He was quietly taking note of the number of men on the other ship ready to put up a fight. Most of the steam rats seemed occupied with either fire fighting or fear. He counted only about seven competent men on the deck. An older sky pirate—who must have been their Quartermaster—was pacing the deck and trying to guide the younger men into action. He looked stocky, confident and grizzled, and so Roberts surmised that the old dog would probably be tough to kill. The Boatswain, a spiny fellow sweating about the ropes, looked more frazzled and underfed. He was young and had likely only seen battle from afar. He would be easy to take out. There were two brawling types—likely mercenaries. The smaller, goateed one had scrambled to one of the machine guns and the larger bald one stood, grasping a mast, howling to the wind as he fired his rifle to the heavens. They could pose a challenge, Roberts thought as he smiled wryly. There were two younger men—athletic, but not burly—flanking another older man. Their pistols and gazes were set directly in contempt to The Rotter’s Rose and in loyalty to the man between them: Captain James Torrance.

“Ah ha,” Roberts said as he recognized his enemy in the spyglass. “Torrance, you old coward. Let’s see how much of that British treasury you’ve got in your holds this time.”

Torrance had once been the pride of Her Majesty’s Aero Force, and had received numerous medals and accolades for his bravery in the Great London Blitzes of the 1940’s and 1950’s. But as recent years rolled around, Torrance discovered that he had aged into a spiteful and embittered man. He was tired of risking his life in the skies when the nobleman below sat miserly upon heaps of treasury funds. Greed and disillusionment had overtaken Torrance and in a stunning show of betrayal, he had killed a treasury officer and stolen his portmanteau, and with it records of every secret cache of British wealth in the entire world.

Roberts expected such duplicity from that breed of sky dog, who, like him, had been lost by his homeland at a young age. It was all well and good to live only for yourself, but if you had spent as much of your life as Torrance had in the service of something greater, you had best never do it wrong. He saw Torrance as a traitor, and as such, decided that he deserved neither the mercy nor respect he may have shown any other pirate captain.

Roberts was going to relish destroying this famed fighter of the skies.

“Captain Roberts,” a woman’s voice chirped from about thirty feet above him. He didn’t need to look up to know it was Winifred “Fred” Bailey, his best lookout, addressing him.

“Aye, Fred? What’s troubling you?”

She answered back, her Australian accent quivering with anxiety, “Well, you just said it was Torrance. If that’s true, then those roughnecks on board are likely to be former British soldiers.”
He glanced up. “And your point?”

“They may not be as spirited as Confederates or as organized as Nazis, but they’ll be just as hard to kill. Are you sure it’s worth the loss of men? They may not even have any gold.”

“As long as Wilkes and Tamsin do what’s planned, I have no doubt that we have the edge on them.”

“But they could have more soldiers hidden below deck, and can you really expect Hanson to be prepared for that? Not to mention what Torrance likely has to offer?”

Roberts considered Fred’s words. She had a tendency to be a worry worm, but her arguments were usually sound. He though about his options and then grinned up at her as he made his decision. “Then it looks like I’ll be leading the boarding party. I have a mind to learn how Torrance lives up to his reputation.”

Fred groaned as she watched her Captain saunter to where the boarding party was preparing their ranks. To the casual observer, he looked too pretty, too preened, too polished to be a ruthless cutthroat. His ebony locks were always smoothed back and glistened with pomade. His pale face was hairless save for his eyebrows and carefully tended sideburns. He was a handsome man, at least that’s what Fred had heard other women say about him, but she had never noticed. Something about his cold blue eyes or broken nose had left her feeling vacant. He had no piercings, no peg leg, and no parrot chirping one-liners on his shoulder. He wore only the best cut suits and his waistcoats were made from the most colorful Chinese silks. In fact, he was never seen without a waistcoat. Even when he dashed off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves to fight, his waistcoat stayed on. Unbuttoned, but still on. Despite these trappings of gentility, he was a pirate through and through. He was a natural leader of men, a determined con artist, lucky gambler, ace shot and former boxing champion of the greater Brixton rings. His one weakness was perhaps his pride, and his sheer determination in the face of impossible odds. Fred realized in retrospect that by mentioning Torrance’s strength as fighter, she had only baited the beast within her Captain.