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 Four – Albatross Eggs

Chapter 5 – Shark and Jellyfish

“I don’t think you realize how difficult it is to climb a rope ladder in this suit,” complained Dionne Sutton as Duffy and I hauled her up through the hatch and deposited her on the interior deck of the Clair de Lune. The crack of gunfire somewhere in the distance worried me.

“Never mind that now,” I said. I raised my voice. “Captain Levi, let’s make haste away from this place!”

“I’m on it, girl!” came the reply. “Seems we might need a tail gunner!”

“Got it,” declared Duffy, who disappeared aft, leaving me alone with our new passenger.

I slid the hatch shut and regarded Miss Sutton. “We’ve got a problem,” I said.

“Problem? You mean other than the Southerner firing at us?” She began undoing fastenings on the suit, each of which made a curious ripping sound, though I could see no torn cloth.

I smiled. “Well, our pilot is occupied at the moment, but I doubt he’ll be interested in any destination but home in the Free City.”

“The ‘Free City’?” asked Dionne, as she struggled her top half out of the suit. Underneath, she appeared to wear a whole body garment made of light blue cotton. Like the diving suit, this garment had a patch with the word NASA stitched onto it. It also had the name “Sutton” embroidered on another patch, affixed to the upper left side of her shirt, above a pocket. Her attention turned to pushing the diving suit down below her waist.

“Yes, the Free City of New Orleans, of course. Home. We shall have to keep our plan secret from him until we can figure out our next step. But yes, that comes after making our escape from my father, without alerting the local authorities to our unauthorized presence in their territory.”

She paused her struggles long enough to look up at me. “Home. So this Captain Levi, he’s more loyal to the Queen than you and Duffy are?”

“More loyal? Duffy and I are loyal, just not blindly so. Levi’s loyal to money, and the Queen pays him more than enough. He’s not going to risk that for you or me.”

I helped her pull first one, then the other of her heavy boots off. She let out a squeal of delight and said, “Free at last! Thanks for your help, Ida. Now, do you happen to have anything for me to wear on my feet? Tennis shoes? Sandals? Slippers?”

“Tennis?” I asked. “Oh, is that an athletic outfit? It looks somewhat military in nature.”

She grinned. “Military? Not me!” Several emotions crossed her face and then she added, “Well, I suppose that all depends on how you look at it. Let’s just say I never enlisted.”

The ack-ack report of the airship’s tail guns startled us both.

“Hmm, enlisted or not, I dare say you’re in the thick of it now. Let’s see what we have for shoes for you.” I led her to the ship’s locker, which contained several duffel bags and a crate. Inside the crate, I found a spare pair of boots that looked like the ones Duffy wore. I handed them to her. “Try these? They might be a little large.”

As she tried the boots on, the interior lights flickered and switched off, replaced by the dim red glow of emergency lighting.

From the cockpit, Levi cursed and shouted. “Hellfire! Pushed it too far and blew a circuit. Someone get on that! We’re dead if they get in the air while we’ve got our pants down!”

“Perfect!” cried Dionne.

“How do you figure?” I said, leading her aft and up a ladder to the engine room. Calling it a ‘room’ is quite generous, since only Levi could have stood up straight without banging his head on the conduits along the ceiling.

Dionne pushed her hair behind her ears and stared at the banks of cables, lights, fuses, and dials on the engineering panel. Many of the lights shone an angry red. “Hmm, what do you mean?” she murmured in a distant voice, her attention fully on the electrical devices.

I pressed the matter. “You said, ‘perfect’ after the lights went out, and it didn’t sound sarcastic.”

A line appeared in her forehead, and she glanced sideways at me as though she had forgotten I was there. “Hmm? What? Oh. Nothing, it’s just that the boots fit me perfectly. It’s a nice surprise. Now this is cool!”

I wiped my forehead with the back of my hand and shook off the sweat. “Cool? Hardly.”

She gestured at the panel. “It’s more advanced than I expected. Do you have a schematic?”

The ship tilted at an alarming angle all of a sudden, and the sound of the wind whistling past penetrated even into the interior of the engine room. I scanned the room for papers that might be blueprints or electrical diagrams. “Can’t say it’s handy, this is more Duffy’s area than mine.”

“Funny,” she said. “I was going to say I wish Lee were here. He’s a real MacGyver!”

“A what?”

“He can fix anything. A real whiz. But it seems this one’s simple enough even for a scientist; do you have any blue fuses in that box?”

I hadn’t noticed the box until she pointed it out. It had the word “fuses” painted right on it. Not wanting to appear dull, I opened it and rummaged around. I pulled out a blue glass bulb and handed it to her without a word.

“Yeah, just like that,” she said, taking it from me. “Wow, two hundred amps? Is that all?”

I watched as she unscrewed a much darker blue bulb and replaced it with the new one. She tossed the old bulb to me. It was too hot to hold for long, so I shoved it into one of the pockets in my skirt. “So, you have this kind of thing back home?”

She studied the panel, tracing invisible lines in front of it with her fingertips. “Hmm? Well, sort of. Like I said, this was a simple fix. Oh, here it is!”

She threw a switch, and the red lights winked off one by one, as green ones sprang on in their place. A high pitched whine filled the small room, and I heard both Levi and Duffy cheer below.

“Looks like you did it!” I cried.

“Yep! Looks like I’m putting the old PhD to use, even here.”

We left the engine room and joined Duffy in the tail section.

“Great work, gals!” cried Duffy, peering into the dual eyepieces of the rear guns, out into the night. “We were flyin’ blind for a bit there, hey?”

“Thank our new guest, she did all the work,” I said.

Dionne laughed. “Changing a fuse is hardly genius level work, but thank you. Fascinating technology on this ship, it’s exciting!”

Duffy grinned at her. “You’re tellin’ me! Never seen anythin’ like it. And the zephyr engines, they’re just spooky. Nothing that powerful can be that quiet, ya know?”

Dionne shrugged and leaned on the railing, searching the darkness behind us. “You fired shots. Were we pursued?”

“Yeah. Looks like we’re not done with the Brigadier-General just yet, he followed along the river road on that motorized tricycle of his, takin’ shots at us. I needed to explain to him that it’s time to let go.”

My throat was dry. “Did you—”

She shook her head. “Couldn’t see clearly, but last I saw, he turned around to head back to Ouiatenon. I expect that aeroplane to come howling up the river any minute now.”

“Oh, an airplane!” cried Dionne, her eyes full of excitement. “This place is much more advanced than I thought!”

Duffy shot her a puzzled look.

“We need to be anywhere but on the river,” I said. I spoke into the tube on the wall. “Captain, can we leave the Wabash? They’re going to expect us to follow it.”

“Thought of that, yeah. We’re still pretty close to town, might get spotted. Harder ta navigate at night over cornfields, too.”

“I don’t know about that. Seems like a good time to get lost as any,” said Duffy. “C’mon Captain, let’s be unpredictable!”

The silence stretched out uncomfortably, then Levi sighed and said, “Yer right, we can’t afford much of a fight. Better to go dark and low. But if they figure us out, we’ll have noplace to hide!”

House lights along the river shrank, receding from us the Clair de Lune rose into the moonlit sky above the Wabash. The airship’s walls thrummed as the zephyr fans spun up and turned the ship toward the plains to the west of the river.

A familiar growl from outside rose even above Clair de Lune’s engines.

“Too late!” cried Duffy, swiveling the guns to peer back up the river.

“Too late!” echoed Levi. “Shoulda stayed down. I’m gonna make a run for it, maybe they’ll get lost too!”

The thrumming of the engines rose to a higher-pitched whine, and the emergency lights flickered. I worried Levi might blow another fuse, but said nothing.

“You know,” said Dionne, “the trouble with airplanes is that they’re like sharks.”

“What was that about sharks?” said Levi over the speaking tube.

Dionne continued, tucking her hair behind her ears, eyes unfocused. “Well, sharks, you know, can only ever move forwards. If they stop, they run out of oxygen and die. If airplanes stop, they lose lift and fall out of the sky. A dirigible like this can just float like a jellyfish. I suggest you play to our strength.”

After a long pause, Levi said, “Jellyfish. Huh. Better hope y’all can take it, but we’re goin’ up!”

The whine stepped down to a hum, and the hum deepened and died. The red emergency lights dimmed and winked out, leaving us in darkness thick enough to spread on toast.

“What’s he doin’? Is he crazy?” cried Duffy. “We’re dead in the air!”

Peering out the back windows, the only light came from the glint of moonlight on the water as the Wabash fell behind us. I had a sense of buoyancy and light-headed dizziness as the airship followed the whim of the winds.

I put a hand on her shoulder and said, “Not dead, but floating upwards, like a bobber. Feel that? My ears just popped!”

The growl of the aeroplane’s engines grew louder and closer. I prayed that the Clair de Lune’s active camouflage was enough to conceal us up here among the wispiest of clouds.

Though I couldn’t see Duffy, I felt her shift, and knew she looked up at me. “I’d feel better if the moon weren’t so bright and full. As it is, we’re cooked if we pass between them and the moon or high clouds. We’ll stand out no matter how good this ship is at hidin’.”

The deck vibrated under my boots, and I knew that the Dixie aeroplane had passed underneath us. I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. “There, you see?”

“We’re not out o’ th’ woods just yet!” said Levi. “They’re turnin’ or circlin’. Searchin’ fer us.”

My ears popped again, and I found I had to take deeper breaths. The Wabash behind us now just a silver thread of moonlight, I wondered whether I’d ever been this high in the sky ever before. A faint glint of something traced a path across my view.

“They’re behind us now, but far below,” said Duffy, eyes back on the viewfinder.

Dionne piped up, “You have night vision? Remarkable! I hope they don’t have it too!”

I hadn’t thought of that.

Levi said, “Seems unlikely. Th’ Queen bought these at a hefty price from a military dealer from New England. An’ New England’s no fan of the U.S. of D.”

“Still,” I said, “they’re flying that thing at night, so they’ve got to be able to see somehow.”

“Or they’re just that desperate,” Duffy murmured under her breath.

We continued like that for long minutes, the shark-like aeroplane circling the fields below us in ever wider arcs.

“All right,” wheezed Levi. “This is as high…as I can take ‘er safely. Much higher… an’ we’ll be… gaspin’ fer breath.”

The zephyr engines kicked on, and the Clair de Lune pushed forward into the uncharted night. My stomach tingled with butterflies even as fairy lights danced in my peripheral vision. I leaned on the rail, squinting into the night, at Duffy’s side. Dionne fumbled her way to join me and we three kept a silent watch together.

And then, the circling glint of light seemed to halt.

I whispered, “What’s happened? I thought sharks and aeroplanes couldn’t stop.”

Dionne’s elbow brushed mine as she shrugged. “Shouldn’t be possible, not at this level of technology, but—”

Duffy swore. “Blasted gaskets! They haven’t stopped at all.” She raised her voice to be heard by Levi up front. “The shark might just be on to the jellyfish, Cap’n! They’re flyin’ straight at us! Crank ‘er up, we need to get outta here!”