Tamsin was trying her best not to shiver, lest her trembling threw Jackson’s equilibrium off. She thought ruefully that Roberts had been right; she should have worn the tight denim trousers of a steampacker or a leather coat. However, as soon as Roberts told her that she would be flying with Jackson through the clouds, she had been less worried about warmth and more concerned about looking pretty. She had been defiantly set on wearing her layers of knee length petticoats. She carefully selected an embroidered vest to wear over her muslin blouse and spent hours fretting over her rouge and curls. Roberts had called her a “besotted fool”, but it didn’t matter because Jackson had said she looked pretty.
She would have still looked pretty if she hadn’t been soaked through by the clouds. Now, she looked no better than a drowned rat in goggles, dangling aimlessly from Jackson’s torso. She was ashamed by the thought of what she must look like to him now.
Jackson, however, was a steampacker, and as such was too busy reading the dials and valves on his wrists to worry about how ugly the cold girl trembling at his chest looked. His mind was now surging with temperatures and pressure percentages, the force of gravity and the pull of the wind. So many physics calculations were flying through his mind and he was quick enough to figure them all out within a second. If he was sloppy, his jittering, roaring backpack of steam could explode due to pressure or run out of helium, leaving them to death.
Jackson was doing his job, and Tamsin was bored out of her mind, waiting for their part of the battle to begin.
“Is it time yet?” Tamsin called impatiently. “I hear shots in the distance.”
He turned his attention from the pressure valves on his right sleeve to the brass watch attached to his left.
“Twenty-nine after six. Right on time.”
Tamsin almost squirmed in impatience. “Are we gonna go?”
“You still got my gun?”
“And the flamethrower and blowtorch,” Tamsin answered affirmatively. They were all tied and clipped on to the harness she was wearing, much like she was attached to his harness. She grimaced for a moment at the undue weight they placed on her shoulders. It never occurred to her that Jackson felt their weight, too, as well as hers.
“Alright, here we go,” Jackson declared.
He suddenly crouched his body forward, displacing Tamsin’s position of comfort in the process. The engines suddenly stopped their steady whirling and began to whistle furiously as Jackson upped their speed. They were no longer hovering in mid-air, but zooming quickly through space.
Jackson meandered through the sky. He randomly darted east and then west, cut the power to drop through the air and then fired his pack again to lift off into the sky. To a casual observer he was flying like a madman, but Tamsin understood what he was doing. Stealth was of the utmost importance in their little ploy and Jackson was being careful to always be flying in cloud cover. Roberts had made it clear that it was essential that she and Jackson remained unseen. While The Rotter’s Rose kept their prey occupied on their port side, she and Jackson would infiltrate the ship on the starboard side.
Jackson paused in the middle of a cumulus cloud and quieted the engines. Tamsin could hear the cries of battle much clearer now. She could make out the pops of pistols being shot, the rat-tat-tat of the machine guns and the cries and curses of the men at war. She sighed and smiled, feeding off of the adrenaline now surging through her veins.
“You ready?” Jackson asked.
She nodded and said, “Let’s start a riot.”
He chuckled. “Alrighty.”
With that Jackson led them cleanly through the cloud and into the maelstrom of battle. Tamsin immediately looked to their flanks, their heavens and their belows for any sign of an another steampacker who might try to snipe them down.
“All clear!” she shouted back to Jackson.
Roberts’s plan had worked. Most of the small airship’s attentions were placed on her port side. The men were scrambling to fend off the machine guns singing from The Rotter’s Rose and the boarding party that would attack from that side. The starboard side, however, was almost entirely empty. Tamsin and Jackson were to sneak in on this side.
As they swooped down towards the starboard deck, a couple of steam rats hurried to repel them. Tamsin’s stomach churned slightly as she saw the men pull out pistols and point them in her direction. She unconsciously aimed her own weapon—her flamethrower—at them and noticed a trilling laugh trickle from her throat as she pulled back the trigger. She heard their screams as the flow of fire whirled across their skin. A strange focus consumed her mind as she realized that the fight had begun. She was very much alive and she was going to stay that way.
She heard the steampack’s engines jolt down before she felt them stop. Her skin sparked like firecrackers as she felt Jackson’s hands move around her to unlatch her from his harness. She hardly had anytime to process this tiny excitement though, as more steam rats with more guns rushed from the hold.
Jackson didn’t have time to unlatch his shot gun from Tamsin’s harness. His arms wrapped around her body from behind to aim the gun. Jackson snapped back three shots and swiftly brought down three men. Tamsin, in turn, let loose her flamethrower once more to repel the remaining men charging them.
“Let’s move,” Jackson said tersely as he unclipped his gun from Tamsin.
They made their way carefully below deck, clinging to the dark walls in an effort not to be seen. No one was there, though. Most of the crew was either on the port side, dealing with flames and gunfire, or shouting from the difference and engine rooms below. Jackson led them down another deck to where the cargo hold would be.
He had placed one foot on the stairs when a guard shouted, “Oy, Stan! ‘Ere we go!”
Tamsin grinned as Jackson leaped down the rest of the stairs in a single, fluid bound. She heard his shot gun fire, a grunt, and then another round went off. By the time she had made it down the stairs, both guards were dead on the ground.
“Wow, you are good,” she admired.
He said nothing. He was kneeling by the bodies searching for keys.
Tamsin surveyed the cargo hold door. “It’s no use. There’s no lock on this side. It must be one of those Chinese box designs that opens from the inside.”
Jackson looked quickly at the steel door and saw that indeed, there was no handle or lock, but only hinges. He nodded to Tamsin, “Cut it.”
She dropped her heavy flamethrower on the floor and quickly unlatched the blowtorch from her harness. Before she fired it up, she tugged at her goggles to be sure they were tightly fastened. Jackson covered her as she burned through the inch of steel. She heard shouts and guns going off and the quick, cocking action of Jackson’s gun being consistently reloaded.
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