Here’s the next chapter in my new novel, Trans-Continental: Cannon Belle Run! This is the third book in the Trans-Continental series, which can be read independently of Girl in the Gears and Mississippi Queen if you’re curious.

This book is being written as a serial, published and collected on this site and on Royal Road, if you want to read ahead.

Note: Reality Check, Trans-Continental, and The Multiverse Blues all occur in the same multiverse, in that chronological order.

Chapter Three – The Visitor

Chapter 4 – Albatross Eggs

“I can’t run in this suit!” cried Miss Sutton, as Duffy and I dragged her along at a trot. She stumbled and used words I’d never heard uttered from a lady—other than Duffy—in my entire life.

The roar of the monstrous vehicle behind us sounded closer, though I dared not look back. “We can’t let him capture you, Miss Sutton!”

“Is it better that you’ve captured me?” she panted.

Duffy grunted. “Ugh, he’s almost on top of us! Of course it’s better! We’re not gonna hand you over to some government so’s they can take over the world!”

“I see your point, but maybe we can negotiate?” she said. “I mean, it’s not like they can even use this without an enormous power source. Doesn’t everything here run on steam power?”

In exasperation, I cried, “We’re going to have to debate relative technological advancements another time, ma’am! Just run as best you can!”

“You try running in lead moon-boots and a full pressure suit!”

Duffy’s eyes swept our guest up and down. “Moon boots?”

“I’ll explain later!” she huffed. “I have to stop. Now.”

She planted her heavy boots and struggled free of our grasp, then doubled over to wheeze as though she suffered from consumption.

Duffy and I turned to face the bellowing land vehicle and its rider. He had stopped twenty or thirty feet away, engine still thrumming with a caged tiger’s growl.

“Welp, this is it, love. I’m out of aces up my sleeve, and Levi will be lookin’ for us on the bridge. Got any ideas?”

Dread flooded my insides with a leaden weight. As the rider dismounted, I knew what I’d see as he peeled off his road goggles. I said, “I’ll do what I can to buy us time, but I’m at the end of my rope as well.”

The rider favored us with a wicked grin, the lines on his face standing out as road dust caked his features. Everywhere but his eyes. Those ice-water blue eyes that had last looked upon me with pity and scorn. “Well, if it isn’t my wayward boy! Still playin’ dress-up, I see! And what have we here? The mechanic gal you ‘died’ with, eh? Glad to see you’ve recovered!”

Duffy’s hand went to the pistol on her belt.

Brigadier-General Stillwell mirrored her motion, showing us a long-barreled revolver, which he pointed at Duffy’s feet.

I seethed inside, but called upon all my skills from the stage to not let him have the satisfaction. “Are you, father? Are you really?”

“Of course, of course!” he guffawed. “Now, just hand over the lady in the orange suit, and I’ll leave you to your happy afterlife together.”

I had to think fast, or blood would be spilled; my father’s a crack shot. “Hand her over? And if she doesn’t want to go with you?”

Miss Sutton turned and raised her head, honey-colored hair draped across one eye, the other open wide with fear. She shook her head staring at the gun in my father’s hand, mouth forming an O.

His eyes flicked from Duffy to me and back. “You gonna stop me, Ira? Yer friend gonna gun me down right here? Is that the kind of company y’all keep these days?”

“The company I keep?” I forced a laugh. “How many have died during your campaigns, Brigadier-General? How many more will die before you’re done? And you have the gall to talk about the company I keep? Please, do go on, sir!”

“Ida,” said Duffy, in a low, warning tone.

I held up an index finger to her and she let out a frustrated sigh.

Birds circled overhead, long wings colored orange by the afterglow of the sunset.

“Ira,” he said, “I’m not having this discussion with you. You should be by my side, commanding men, but you’ve chosen this freak show of a life. Very well, I’m done and finished with you. At least your sister’s got some sense in her pretty little head. She’s true to Dixie, not a traitor like yourself. I won’t ask a third time; hand her over and we’ll part without any harm bein’ done, ya hear me?”

“Listen,” said Miss Sutton. “I don’t want anyone getting hurt over me. I’m sure we can just—”

“You better be sure of yourself, sir,” said Duffy, her voice low and dangerous, her pistol now drawn. “You can’t talk to my gal Ida that way. And you sure can’t talk to me that way, either! Move that gun up so much as an inch, and I’ll fill you with holes!”

A strangled cry reached my ears as the birds overhead broke their circle and swooped toward the ground.

“Ah would like to see you try!” cried my father, his gaze hardening. His grip tightened on his revolver.

Duffy drew back the hammer on her pistol with a click that froze my spine.

“Duffy, I don’t think we—get down!” I cried, as I realized that the albatross carried something in its feet. Something small, metal and round. I cried out, “Grenade!”

I pulled Miss Sutton and Duffy to the ground; Duffy’s pistol went off.

So did the Brigadier-General’s revolver. The bullet ripped through the air just overhead where Duffy had stood.

And then the ground opened up as the concussion shoved us back. The grenade packed a punch that knocked the wind from my lungs and hurled rocks and debris in a ring around it. The world slowed down; everything seemed farther away and muted, as if underwater.

Peering up, I noticed wires that connected machinery from the albatross’s head to its wings, one eye replaced by a lens. It swooped up into the sky, having delivered its deadly metal egg. Other birds lined up, aimed at us. My companions stared at the sky in disbelief, frozen in place.

My Dixie Army training kicked in. “Go, go!” I shouted, and Duffy and I crawled, scrambled, and ran, dragging the fumbling Miss Sutton along with us. I stole a glance backward, and felt a pang of guilt as I saw my father laid out on the ground, unconscious or dead. Maggie would have to tend to him, wherever she was.

Several more albatross-delivered detonations followed, though none close enough to knock us from our feet. We made it to the bridge and caught our breath, since the birds seemed unwilling to fly close to it. The twilight gloom closed in, and I welcomed the cover it gave us.

“Ida, what’s with the bomber seagulls?” asked Duffy, still breathing hard.

I shook my head. My ears still rang from the blast. “Nothing from Dixie, that’s for sure. Doubt it’s from around here or Chicago, either.”

“Kansan Empire?” asked Duffy. “Seems crazy enough to be—“ She paused, uncertain.

“Friday’s?” I finished for her. “Maybe, but how’d they arrive just when we did?”

“Excuse me, but is it always so violent here?” complained Miss Sutton.

“Yes, ma’am. Always. Non-stop,” said Duffy, laughing. “Why, we hardly get a wink of sleep from all the fighting!”

Miss Sutton planted a fisted glove upon a hip. “I see. So what’s the plan now? Hike overland to California? Or can we catch a train? You have trains, I believe?”

I had to laugh. “Ma’am, you truly are a fish out of water! What’s in California?”

She looked surprised at that. “Why, that’s where my love Lee is. He’s the only one who can help me. And it’s just Dionne, okay?”

“Miss Sutton. Dionne.” said Duffy. “What government is Lee with? What’s your goal?”

Dionne sighed. “He’s not with a government. He’s from my—that is, we’re from the same place. I’m a very long way from home, and he can help me get back there. He’s got a laboratory, a company. And a significant source of power.”

I watched her face with care as I said, “He knows something about the kind of portal that brought you here?”

She nodded, though her eyes had a haunted look about them. “I sent him a sign. Or at least I tried to. I could only get the portal to open where I’d seen him last. The best I could do was to bring it to ground level.”

“And you can’t just open a portal back to where you came from? Why’d you come here if all you want to do is go home?”

She shook her head. “I wasn’t at home, I was on the Moon,” she said, glancing up at the silvery orb in the sky. “I don’t come from there. I come from here. Well, not here, exactly. Another here. It’s complicated. Neither he nor I belong in this place, and I need to find him so we can get home.”

Duffy and I exchanged a confused glance. I remembered the bleak plain I’d seen through the portal and said, “The actual moon? You expect us to believe you’ve been there?”

She flapped her arms in frustration. “Why else do you think I have this pressure suit on? Why else would I need heavy boots like these?”

“I thought you were in a diver’s suit,” said Duffy. “Though I don’t suppose there’s much call for that in the Wabash River, hey?”

Dionne stared at Duffy as though she was crazy. “A diver? Why would—oh never mind. Can you two get me to San Francisco?”

“What’s ‘San Francisco’?” I said.

“It’s a city in California. On the coast. There’s a big bay.”

“The California Republic?” said Duffy. “Never been that far west, myself, but we can do our best.”

Scanning the sky, I said, “Duffy, what about Levi?”

“What about him?”

“Well,” I said, “How will we talk him into going to the California Republic instead of taking us back to the Queen?”

“I’m not going to England or wherever,” said Dionne.

“Not the Queen of England,” said Duffy. “The Queen of New Orleans!”

Dionne laughed. “Queen of New Orleans? What a world!”

I didn’t get what was so funny, so I began to worry that our guest had been concussed by the grenade. “We’ll worry about Levi after we get out of the frying pan, okay? Let’s just get out of here before those birds come back with more artillery. Or father recovers and runs us down.”

“Yeah, let’s do that. One thing at a time, hey?”

“You know,” said Dionne, “I think this is the first we’ve all agreed on anything! Who are you two, anyway? That woman introduced you as her sister, and she knew my name somehow.”

I shrugged. “I don’t know how Maggie knew your name, or that you’d arrive when and where you did. But my name’s Ida Stillwell, and this is Duffy Hollowood. We’re a pair of rapscallions, currently in the employ of the Queen of New Orleans.”

“Rapscallions?” said Dionne, her eyes wild.

Duffy clapped her on her orange-suited shoulder. “That’s an inside joke. We’re adventurers, spies if you will. The Queen sends us to do her dirty work.”

“So you’re keeping me for this Queen, rather than letting the other guy take me? I still don’t see how that’s better.”

I said, “Well, we started this trip because my sister warned us that something was about to happen, so we came to see. You heard her ask us to take you away. Our airship captain will want to take you to New Orleans, but we’re going to have to convince him otherwise, one way or another. Queen Melony will seem delightful, but she’ll do absolutely anything to protect New Orleans.”

“Yeah, we procured a weather machine for her once that killed a lot of invaders from Dixie. Tornado ripped autogyros from the sky. It was horrifying. Who knows what she’d do with your technology?”

Dionne’s eyes narrowed. “A weather machine?”

I chuckled. “Yes, it was called the Sutton Engine.”

“Say that again, Ida.” said Duffy. “This time, slower.”

It was my turn to goggle at the other two, my eyes coming to rest on our guest. “No! Surely not the same Sutton?”

Dionne Sutton bit her lip. “Not precisely. You could say we’re related. And my guess is, anything that could produce a tornado is just a small sample of what my technology could do. Why aren’t you taking me to the Queen? Why have you agreed to take me to San Francisco?”

“Because,” I said, “my sister asked me to. Because you clearly need our help. And because we don’t trust the Queen with you any more than we’d trust Dixie.”

Duffy added, her voice soft, “Because it’s the right thing to do. We may be rapscallions, but we’re not villains, y’see.”

“Seems I’ll have to trust you on that,” said Dionne. “But why are we just standing here on this bridge, talking? Shouldn’t we get going somewhere else?”

The moon disappeared.

“We were waiting for our ride,” said Duffy as she peered up into the sudden deep darkness above. “Seems like it’s here!”

A whispery hum announced the arrival of the Claire de Lune, her zephyr fans bringing her to a halt just above the top chord of the bridge’s trestle. A rope ladder fell into our midst and a familiar voice called from above.

“Don’t ye jus’ stand there gawpin’! Get ta climbin’, we got no time ta lose, lassies!”