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 Six – Thar She Blows

Chapter Seven – Bat and Rattlesnake

“What happens on Friday?” asked Dionne, her forehead creased, barely visible in the red emergency lighting.

I shook my head. “Friday’s a person, not a date, in this case.”

“A gear-grindin’ bonkers person,” growled Duffy.

“Dangerous as a rattlesnake, too,” said Levi.

Dionne looked to me to continue. I nodded and said, “She’s all that and worse. She’s our source for your weather machine. She has power, and she uses it to ends that are hard to guess.”

“My weather machine?”

I shrugged. “It had your name on it. It makes a mean tornado, if you hook it up to powerful electricity.”

“Fascinating,” she said. “And this Friday, is she also a scientist?”

I nodded. “Of sorts. More like a sorceress. It seems she’s a polymath, dabbling in many sciences, finding bizarre uses for others’ work. She’s also the Queen of New Orleans’ father.”

Dionne laughed, but stopped when no one joined her. “She is her father? That isn’t even quite possible in—that is, I have never heard of such science.”

I studied her a moment, then went on. “I think I can trust you. Friday is like me, Dionne. Not quite what she seems. For that matter, the Queen of New Orleans is a symbolic title. She sometimes appears less formally as Melvin, Friday’s son.”

A light dawned behind Dionne’s eyes. “Oh. Oh! I see! You, and they, are transgender?”

It was my turn to be confused. “I don’t know that word, but I can guess your meaning. I am, and Friday is, but I think Melvin just likes to dress the part. New Orleans needs a Queen, and Melvin loves the attention. Friday lives as she pleases, and so do I. Only, I think there’s a lot more ‘sorcery’ involved to help Friday live as herself. She hasn’t shared much of that with me so far, but I know more is possible.”

Dionne nodded, smiling. “Oh, it is, most definitely!”

Duffy turned in her seat to look at Dionne in shock. “What d’you know about it? More Sutton genius? Gonna tell us you can snap your fingers, presto-change-o, hey?”

“What? Me? No, that’s not my area of specialty. Math, physical science, some engineering, that’s me. Biology and whatnot, that’s other people.” She seemed to shrink at the scrutiny, her eyes more guarded than before.

“Queen’s gonna love this one,” said Levi. “Maybe this trip was worth the risk after all.”

I exchanged glances with Duffy and Dionne.

“What’ll we do about him?” whispered Duffy.

I shook my head and held a finger to my lips.

Dionne’s head turned as she tracked something out in the darkness. “What’s that?”

I saw nothing. “What’s what?”

Duffy peered into the viewfinder. “All I see is that damned warship on the horizon. Don’t see any more explosions or rocket tracks, though.”

“No, no, much closer! A huge bat!”

I squinted out the aft windows. For a moment, I could see nothing but darkness, stars, and moonlit cloud wisps. And then, I noticed some stars winking at me, and something dark eclipsed a bit of cloud. If it was a bat, it was a man-sized bat, with a triangular frame, its flight silent but erratic. “There! At seven-o-clock! Gaining on us!”

“Should I shoot it down?” asked Duffy.

At the same instant that I shouted “no!”, Levi shouted “yes!”, and Dionne just shook her head.

“Gotta be an enemy. We got no friends out here,” hissed Levi.

“It could be Maggie!” I gripped the railing. “She could be defecting!”

Duffy glanced at me. “You sure? She coulda defected earlier.”

“She didn’t have to tip us off at all! She didn’t have to let us take Dionne!”

Levi shouted, “Fire! Fire damn you!”

Duffy’s eyes left mine to focus on the interloper. Her hands grasped the rear gun and swiveled it to aim, her finger on the trigger. “Sorry, love, I just can’t take that—”

Splat!

Something like a watermelon hit the back windows and spread a thick opaque substance across it.

Duffy cried out in surprise, and the guns fired several bursts.

Something thudded against the skin of the Clair de Lune, like we’d been hit with a pile of sandbags. Levi shouted over the speaking tube, while Dionne sank to the deck, her eyes wild.

Something scurried above, followed by a terrible rending, and the clatter of metal on metal.

Without making sense of anything Levi or Duffy said, I leaped from the observation deck into the main body of the airship and found the hatch up into the upper compartment, where I knew the batteries and lifting coils could be found.

Unfortunately, it was quite dark, not even lit by emergency lights. All I had to orient myself was the occasional indicator light on machinery, and the ghost light of the lift coils along the interior of the airship body.

I held still, drawing my little holdout Derringer pistol from within my skirts. I wished I’d kept a flare or even a pack of lucifer matches on my person, but this was all I had. I did my best to control my breathing, hoping that the intruder could see no better in the dark than I could.

As my eyes began to adjust, some motion high up in the chamber caught my attention; the skin of the ship, where it had been torn open, allowed me a glimpse of the night sky. A sudden noise turned my head toward the nose of the ship, where I caught a fleeting glimpse of a silhouette before the greenish foxfire of the lifting coils winked out. My weight against the floor diminished as the ship began to drop.

Levi’s shrill shouts barked from somewhere in the direction I faced, no doubt another voice tube somewhere in the darkness ahead. I felt, rather than saw or heard, movement in that direction. I took a couple of slow and careful steps to my left, my steps lighter due to Clair de Lune’s descent. I grabbed onto one of the interior ribs of the ship’s frame to anchor myself.

The scent of orchids and leather came upon me, much closer than I expected, along with a voice like velvet. “Ida Stillwell. You have something I want. And someone I need. I trust we can come to an understanding?”

I couldn’t find my voice for a long, terrible moment. Her nearness had a paralyzing effect on me, very much like a rattlesnake in the dark, within striking distance. I had just two shots in my tiny pistol; I could fire toward the voice if I dared. I pulled back the hammer on the Derringer and decided to draw her out more. “An understanding? Friday, you may be a sorceress, but you’re all alone on my ship, outnumbered.”

“Yes, outnumbered and outgunned no doubt. Yet I still have the upper hand. Your ship will impact the cornfields below in roughly a minute, probably less. Promise me the woman and her possessions, and I’ll consider turning the power back on.”

Not that I needed confirmation, but the growing panic in Levi’s shouts gave substance to her threat. I replied, as cool as I could manage, “What a stupid threat. You’d die with us, and your prize would be destroyed as well!”

“Stupid? Stupid!” she spat. “How dare you. Perhaps I should let it happen, just to spite you, hmm? I might die, but at least I won’t lose.”

Time ticked by, and I had to think fast. “Fine. I’m sorry. You’re the last person I’d think of as stupid. Turn the engines back on, and we’ll talk like civilized folk, okay?”

A low whistle gained steam all around us as the air rushed past the falling ship, faster and faster.

Just then, the interior lights came on, dazzling my eyes. A moment later, my full weight returned, and then some, as the lifting coils hummed to life and the zephyr fans outside whirred once again. A large scrap of darkness rushed up to me as I blinked in the light; a black-clad, opera-cloaked Friday held a revolver pointed right at my head.

“I do hate to be so uncivilized, Ida. Should have let me turn the power back on,” she whispered. “That was a stupid stunt. We could have negotiated.”

I kept my Derringer aimed in her general direction. I thought about shooting her before she could shoot me, but I didn’t give myself very good odds. So, I stalled. “At least we’re not splattered all over the fields. No thanks to you.”

She laughed. “A ship like this would hit hard, but we’d walk away. I did the math.”

“What if your math was wrong?”

“Sugah, my math is never wrong. And now it’s time for me to go. This isn’t over.”

A rope or cable, leading from her to the opening overhead, went taut, dragging Friday backwards and away from me, out into the night once again.

Duffy’s curly head popped up through the hatch near my feet. “Did I just see—?”

“If you think you saw Friday turn into a bat and fly away, you’re not far off.”

“Huh. Didn’t get a chance to shoot her, hey?”

I shook my head. “If I did, she’d have blown a bigger hole in me. I don’t know how you got the power back on, but thanks for that. Couldn’t have cut it much closer, by Friday’s reckoning.”

“You’re not kiddin’, sweetie! Corn tassles musta tickled our belly right before Dionne bypassed the main power. Which reminds me, I gotta turn main power back on from here, the auxiliary power ain’t gonna last long.”

I helped her up into the main enclosure, and watched as she traced cables to find the main breaker.

“Ready for cut-over?” she yelled toward the speaking tube.

Levi replied, “Ready. On three! One. Two.”

“Three!” cried Duffy. The lights blinked off, then sprang back on. Relays clicked all around the chamber, and the hum of the lifting coils intensified.

I sighed relief. “Captain, is there any sign of Friday?”

“Yeah, something flew off just after we got the auxiliary power online.”

“She made her escape, then. And she found us despite our camouflage. Levi, can you change course and get us out of here?”

“Already on it, lass. I’m stayin’ low. Lower than I’d like, I’ll be fightin’ turbulence the whole way. But the auto camouflage’ll work better down here. Lucky fer us, that warship’s not built fer speed, and we’re already out of range of their missiles.”

“What about rocket fighters?” I said, thinking of another time we’d been pursued by a Kansan airship.

Levi snorted. “If they had any of those, they’d already be here.”

“I dunno,” said Duffy. “Like the missiles, those are lethal, but it seems they want Dionne alive. No way Friday coulda used one of those to land on top of Clair de Lune, either.”

On cue, Dionne popped up in the hatch. “Oh my, isn’t all this gorgeous! Those cylinders, they actually turn electricity into lift? How’s that even possible?”

“I thought you were the genius,” scoffed Duffy.

Dionne grinned. “Even geniuses can’t know everything.”

“If yer done up there, why don’t y’all come back down into the cabin now? We gotta shut the interior lights off, if we don’t want to advertise our location.”

I followed the others down the ladder and shut the hatch. “Think we’ll get away this time, Duffy?”

“Count on it, sweetie,” she said, touching the brim of her bowler. “We’re home free.”