The Captain's Peace III

They had been in Paris for almost a week when George started thinking that there was something strange about Annabel. She had forever been a ball and party person but when the banker threw a ball she declared herself down with a headache and didn't show up. That was the first time that George had ever known her to miss a ball. He was puzzled by that but he was even more puzzled when he went back up to his rooms to get something and thought he saw her slipping into her own room. If she had such a headache that she would miss her passion, dancing, he couldn't imagine her going around for anything else.

George didn't mean to watch Annabel with greater attention then he had before, he tried to tell himself that she was just a fool who he would be foolish to care about but he couldn't really convince himself. It might have been his imagination but she seemed to be paying more attention to him as well and Alexander, as clueless as he normally was noticed and started teasing George about wanting to court Annabel. George knew it was a joke now but if he were to honestly show an interest in Annabel Alexander would be forced to shut him down instantly, and would in all likelihood cease their friendship. It was alright for George and Alexander to be good friends but when it came to courtship George was still expected to know his place.

It was several days of awkward staring later that Annabel and George finally had a moment where there was no one else around. Normally Annabel's chaperon would have never allowed it but she was taking her daily nap and in any case George had been established as a trusted family friend who would not compromise the virtue of the young lady of the house. So it was that they happened to both be walking in the garden at the same time and bumped into one another. Well at the time George supposed it to be a coincidence but later he would suspect that Annabel orchestrated their chance meeting to clear the air. There was no one else around, the day being so unbearably hot that the rest of the house had melted on the parlor furniture, and so for the first time George met Annabel outside of a society setting.

“So you did see me the night of the ball?” was the first thing that Annabel said. George was taken aback, they hadn't even exchanged greetings yet and society did not look for bluntness in a well bred young lady. She was also looking right at him, with no lowered eyes and her voice had come on strong. It certainly wasn't how she had acted around him before.

“I think I might have seen you go into your room but I did not question you for I know a woman must have her secrets,” George said delicately. He didn't want to put her in an awkward situation and didn't want to be put in a situation where he would feel it was his duty to have a word with Alexander. He wished Annabel would simply not say anything else so they could both walk away with clear conscience.

“You think I was having an affair don't you?” asked Annabel and George turned slightly pink. If she went and told Alexander that he had made even the suggestion then Alexander would probably call him out and be in his rights too. To his amazement Annabel burst into laughter.

“Did something I say amuse you?” George finally asked, when Annabel had been laughing far longer then he felt was needed.

“I'm sorry. Here I've been worrying about what you were thinking and why you payed so much attention to me after the night of the ball when I knew you had glimpsed me and this whole time you thought I was being a foolish girl playing with her lover. If that were all I would have simply made an excuse about going to the lavatory or needing my sewing scissors, had that occurred to you? And here this whole time I thought you were smart, honestly I am disappointed in you.”

To be continued...

The Captain's Peace II

“My sister intends to take advantage of the peace to go to Paris within the next several weeks,” Alexander explained. “She therefore can hardly be considered a fair commentator.”

“Surely not by herself,” George said horrified, and then he remembered that he didn't really care what she did.

“Oh no, she has a chaperon of course, and as a matter of fact father and mother have asked me to go along with her and I was thinking I just might. Incidentally if I do decide to follow along after her would you like to come along with me? You needn't worry about expenses, father has some contacts from before the war that we will be staying with and I could use the company.” The suggestion was so sudden and came in such a casual voice that it took George a second to truly digest it. He didn't have to worry about being rude because neither Alexander or Annabel seemed to even notice he had dropped from the conversation.

“Won't I be company enough for you?” Annabel asked her brother.

“Men want to company of other men just as women prefer the company of women, except when one is courting of course,” Alexander added as an after thought. George was suddenly struck by just how similar the two siblings were in airheadedness. He had always thought of Alexander as a descent sort and he was, but when he was placed next to his sister it seemed as if their heads were full of fluff in both cases. Another dance started and George was forced to press himself to the wall to get out of the way of the dancers and speak louder then he would have liked to voice his main objection to going with Alexander to France.

“Won't there be some problems with officers of the British army wandering around Paris when we were so recently at war?”

“The peasants might complain a little but if we are careful there shouldn't be any problems. We are at peace George, they can't arrest us for being English. With my father's contacts we might even be spending some time in Boney's court. It would be rather interesting to see a man that we have been fighting against for so long don't you think?”

George did not give an answer right away, he would have considered it the hight of foolishness to agree to go into what he still considered to be enemy territory without thinking about it. Alexander had ways of waring him down however. It was in the end the suggestion that George was a coward that did it. Like many members of the more impoverished nobility George was fiercely proud, he would rather walk straight towards death then get labeled a coward. So it was that the two men, now in civilian clothing, Annabel, and her elderly chaperon were met by a carriage at the dock in France.

It turned out that the connection Alexander's father had was the most famous banker in Paris. Before the war there had been great business between the two men, business that they intended to resume now that the war was over. Annabel was staying with the banker in a show of good faith, and because of this the banker was ready to show the group anything that they would have wanted to see. He was so humble that it sickened George to see, the banker might not have been nobility and therefore beneath them but in France where they had so famously done away with their nobility George felt that the man should have had a little more spine. It was only inside of the business world that the man seemed to stand up straighter and from people's reactions when the saw him the banker was himself a man of extreme power and not someone to be messed with. Alexander and Annabel seemed to take the man's servitude as a matter of course however, so George didn't mention it for fear of making a fool of himself.

Annabel seemed to come alive once they were among the shops of Paris and George flinched to see how she spent money as freely as she did, and never once did anyone else mention it. Annabel had had a classical education which meant that she spoke French like a native, and Alexander himself showed great proficiency. This only served to make George, whose family had not been able to afford a tutor or school for him, more self conscious. He was wholly dependent on Alexander and Annabel for translations of everything.

To be continued...

The Captain's Peace

The fast, joyful, music swirled around George, causing the colorful skirts of the women to bob and dance around him. His feet pounded their way through his part of the dance with angry stomps but no one seemed to notice, which put him in an even worse mood. Finally the dance came to an end and George bowed to his partner with irate, embarrassed, humility. The moment that the dance was over and his obligation to the young lady in question was over he marched back to the wall to continue with the discussion that he had been having before the music started.

“They can't end the war, just like that. Boney can make all of the promises he wants to but he will never stop. They can't believe that he will honestly keep his word.”

“They don't have much of a choice George, this country can't take any more war,” said his friend, Alexander, shrugging. “Incidentally if I hadn't known that you were angry about the news I would have been rather insulted by the way you danced with my sister like it was an unwelcome chore.” George had the grace to look slightly ashamed, he couldn't afford to offend Alexander. Without Alexander George was just another impoverished captain who had spent the remains of his family's money on a commission. With Alexander George was the close friend and confidant of the second son of one of the most powerful families in England. Most of the time George could forget that Alexander was anyone special, he was far more down to earth then most of the aristocratic officers George had met. Now was one of those moment that it was thrown into clear relief that Alexander had very few concerns outside of society. While peace would mean that Alexander would have more time to spend at parties, balls and less time roughing it, it meant possible starvation for George. Of course George, in his pride, could never have mentioned this to Alexander. George had never borrowed any money from anyone, no matter how hard things got, and he wasn't going to start. Part of his shame at the moment was connected to the ball they were at now, a celebration of peace, where there were people wearing clothing worth more then he earned as a captain in a year.

Alexander's sister came to join them, a girl only about a year younger then George, but she had been so sheltered that George thought of her more as a child then a woman. She was one of the ones who was dressed in clothing that made George feel like he was in rags in his regulation uniform. Alexander was wearing a uniform as well, but it had been made by his family's tailor and therefore while a regulation uniform it was still three times the worth of George's.

“Do tell me you and your friend aren't talking about politics again Alex. It's so tiresome,” George was reinforced in his impression that Annabel was a total airhead.

“My dear sister,” said Alexander, laughing and kissing his sister on the cheek. “This ball is for political reasons. You don't complain that we discuss the reason you are getting to enjoy yourself so much do you?”

“I personally am overjoyed that we will be at peace with France now, gloves and wine have fallen in quality since the trade ban, and it would be unpatriotic I was assured to have bought them when we weren't supposed to be able to get them.” George wondered if she even realized that what she was talking about was smuggling or if she was too stupid to even know that. She was a lovely creature, graceful, with a way of making everyone else feel ugly and clumsy but when she opened her mouth he ceased being amazed.

To be continued...

Neriena Wordsmith X

The dirigible showed its age, Neriena was forced to admit it. It had been one of the first and that meant that there had been some changes made to the newer ones that everyone told her were amazing. Not only was it getting worn out and outdated but it also showed signs of their hard use. There were still parts of the ship that had bullet holes and some rips in upholstery that had been clearly and obviously created with a knife. In a few spots on the floor there were blood stains that wouldn't come out no matter how hard anyone scrubbed. Neriena had the money to fix all of this of course, or when it got down to it to just buy another dirigible, but she didn't. No one on the crew would have asked her to either. They days as pirates might have been over with but that didn't mean that weren't still extremely attached and sentimental about their old ship.

Neriena and her remaining crew spent all of a year on land, leading their respectable lives. They went to respectable parties, they donated money to respectable causes, and grew, above all else, extremely bored. They were all travelers to the bone, a sailor rarely stayed in one place for long, and while they had sworn that they weren't going to break the law again, they longed to be on the move. Neriena in particular suffered from this, she had never been part of the cream of society before, except the cream of the underworld, and the life that she had always dreamed about turned out to be stifling when suffered for a long period of time. It didn't help her opinion of life in the well to do world to see the way that she was treated by everyone when it was found that she didn't have a husband and managed all of her own affairs. She was treated like a child, and a rather foolish one at that. Every time she heard someone say something about how women knew nothing of business she committed murder in her mind, with very realistic visuals from personal experience. Blaze helped some because he knew when she was cracking and about to do something stupid and usually he would pull her away from the situation or just stand there as a reminder.

Nonetheless by the end of the year Neriena and the rest of her crew were ready for a change again. There was new business to be had, respectable business, that would keep them busy and on the move. The revolution of travel had completely moved transportation to air and they had a working dirigible that they could use. Neriena kept the house to give her that air of respectability that officials loved, and took to the air once more. This time their ship was properly licensed, with all of the needed papers intact for transport of both passengers and goods. Of course on the paperwork Blaze was the captain and she was simply the owner, because it would have made it more difficult otherwise, but not a single person on the crew would have dared to mention this fact.

The former group of pirates set up in the port of a large city, the ports having been taken over by air travel. No one ever traveled by sea anymore except for for novelty. Their ship was battered and none of them needed the money but it was a good screen of respectability and so they did take passengers on their ship and the crew slept in their proper place on the dirigible. Their rates were cheap because they didn't need them and the passengers they got were the ones who couldn't afford luxury and weren't frightened off by the look of villainy of the crew. Neriena's love for the ocean and the crew's origin as sailors was reflected in the nature of the jobs they took, they were often drifting in the air over the sea, happier then ever.

Neriena Wordsmith IX

Neriena had been afraid that she would have to force their new, kidnapped, bomb expert to work for them. It didn't help her feelings to find that he was a lot younger then she had thought at first. He however threw himself into the work that they gave him, at first with what seemed to be the air of a craftsman who wanted to do things to prove that he could. He was fascinated with the problems connected to arming a dirigible with guns because of the matter of weight and began experimenting with solutions almost as soon as they mentioned the problem to him.

Later he would work for them out of friendship as much as out of curiosity. They never would learn anything about him however, he insisted that they call him Blaze from the get go and never gave them another name to call him. Where Blaze came from and where he learned as much as he did about weapons at such a young age were to forever be a mystery, and it was one that Neriena never pried into. She could understand better then most the desire to work under other names when operating on the wrong side of the law. She imagined that much like herself Blaze was thinking about what would happen to him if and when the crew broke up or could no longer operate.

All things do come to an end and so it was with their pirate days. Just as they were chased out of the oceans, so too were the chased out of the sky. Blaze might have been in the forefront of the development of airship weapons, but the army was not far behind and now that air trade was picking up the government was willing to invest in ships to hunt down the elusive pirates that were giving them so much trouble. It was a day that all of them had been expecting, they had had many warnings that it was coming, and it had drawn out their career for two more years to take to the sky. Now the crew was more ready to go join the rest of the world anyway, even the wildest among them had grown tired of seeing old friends die by the sword and was ready to settle down. There was no fight therefore when Neriena announced that they were going to quit.

Having decided to quit was different then actually doing so, they wanted to quit but that didn't mean they wanted to get caught. It would have been easier if they had been willing to burn the dirigible like they had their ship but none of them were willing to do that. Neriena in particular was against the idea of disposing of the dirigible and she got more of a say then anyone since it was still hers as well as the fact that she was captain. She told all of them that while she might be ready to stop pirating she was not ready to stop captaining the dirigible. This meant that they had to create a legitimate appearance for themselves.

It was easier then Neriena had thought it would be to act innocent. First she set herself up as a wealthy woman, which she was, in a small town. Then she had members of her crew disguise themselves as workmen and deliver the dirigible. In the early days of airship making there had been no documentation of who owned one and what they did with it so no one asked any questions that she didn't want to answer. With most of her crew melting away to lead the lives of the independently wealthy once they were sure no one was gong to blow the whistle, Neriena was left to start yet another new life for herself.

Neriena wasn't totally alone in this new life of hers however. Blaze stayed with her, acting as if she were his sister so that no one would ask how they came to be together. A few members of the crew also moved in, first acting as household servants for her, and then slowly settling into the town. These were her true followers, and she had to admit, probably her only friends. There were still enough of them that they could operate the dirigible if she wanted to and that was a good feeling. They started taking it out on day trips every once in a while, and they were nostalgic. There was time when they were up in the air for them to act like they really were, with no reservations of what people would think or say. Neriena would stomp around the deck in men's clothing and no one would judge her like they would have on land, the crew would have target practice, Blaze would see what he could do to maintain the guns. It was a feeling of liberty that even with all of her money Neriena just didn't feel on land.

To be continued...

Neriena Wordsmith VIII

There weren't many ships in the air and the ones that were in the air were mostly military in nature. This did not deter Neriena and her crew however, the military dirigibles were mostly for transportation or bombs and therefore didn't have cannons to protect them or anything else that a naval ship would have had. For the most part the crews weren't even armed because no one expected the crew to need to fight. A determined pirate crew armed to the teeth was all too capable of capturing a military dirigible as several captains were dismayed to discover. With these prizes giving them the supplies they needed to stay in the air as well as a little more weaponry, Neriena's pirates were able to relax and master the art of their new element. Neriena still loved the sea more then anything else and it depressed her that they could no longer work there but she knew when her welcome had been overstayed and resigned herself.

Some times they were forced to lower their airship onto the ground, first for maintenance and also because they sometimes were forced to attack ground settlements for things that military airships didn't carry. These were always quick attacks that no one expected since Neriena made sure that they happened at night and that the ship spent most of it's time in clouds where no one could see it. Surprise was after all their greatest weapon and she wasn't going to allow the government to trace their location easily.

When they did perform piracy Neriena was always ordered her crew to go with their heads covered and thick pilot goggles on so that they wouldn't be recognized. She herself always went dressed as a man. Her crew questioned this order but Neriena was very firm about it, she wanted them to be able to return to a legal life whenever they chose. The dirigible they had bought went under constant changes as well as they flew, as dangerous as the job was at that height. Almost all dirigibles looked the same except in paint and Neriena took advantage of this.

Neriena continued with her policy of stealing newspapers and documents when they raided something or somewhere to look for information about what was going to be done about them. The newspapers and the government both seemed to be in an uproar from what she could see, and that made her uncomfortable. If they cared as much as they seemed to it was likely that soon dirigibles for the military would come better armed and they would be put out of operation. They were living well now and her crew was content, but Neriena fretted.

The addition of their gunner was pure luck but it was a happy chance that Neriena would thank her lucky stars for. They were raiding a settlement when they came face to face with what Neriena at the time only thought of as a maniac. A very dangerous maniac at that, he was a human weapon, covered with explosives, with a gun in each hand. It was a small town, not the sort of place anyone of them could have expected to find such a well armed person. The man went after Neriena like a homing missal and Neriena would swear for the rest of her life that she had never been as close to death. She also noticed, in spite of the explosions and blasts that suddenly surrounded her, that the weapons the man used were like none other she had ever encountered.

Had it been a one on one fight Neriena would have lost, she had no shame in admitting it. Neriena's crew was not going to stand back and watch as someone tried to blow up their captain however. While he was single-mindedly putting Neriena's reflexes and instinct to the test her crew managed to get behind the man and knock him out. They were all for killing him for the crime of attacking their captain but Neriena insisted he be taken back to their ship alive and a captive.

To be continued...

Neriena Wordsmith VII

She finally managed to convince them that she was a wealthy widow from the country who was a little eccentric. She had heard about this new technology and she did so want to own one, she of course didn't mean to operate it, she would certainly hire some of the local men to do that. If they would just give her a book on how to fly it so that the men she hired would be able to figure out how to run it. The men were very condescending but her money was good so they sold her the dirigible with the promise of availability within a month since it's construction was almost finished. She knew enough about shady business that she made them take her out to the ship field and inspect both the dirigible and the work that was being done on it. That shocked them a little, it being believed that women knew nothing of business, but then the decided it was just her crazy whim and wrote it off.

The ship was nowhere near New York and it took her a couple of days to reach it, first by train, and then with the help of a very well paid off man with both a horse buggy and a row boat. He had been told in very graphic detail what would happen to him if he dared tell the authorities about where they were. He didn't even know who they were really, he thought they were smugglers who were avoiding customs, and they allowed him to believe it. Smuggling didn't count as a hanging offense.

Once on the ship the business of clearing things up began. First they took everything off of the ship that they wanted to keep, mostly only personal items and the treasure they had amassed. They didn't want to keep anything that would remind people of what they were and what they had been, not if they were going to be stuck on land for a month. With bags and packs on their back, suitcases, trunks to be sent later by express men, they set the ship on fire and pounded holes in the bottom to make sure that it would sink once it had burned.

Once they had burned the ship the men who had decided to go back to honest lives left them. They were paid off with their fair shares and in exchange gave many promises never to talk about what they had done or mention any names. For all accounts and purposes Neriena's ship had never existed, had never made it to the United States and the crew had simply appeared on the soil of America again.

Neriena enjoyed the next month greatly, and from what she saw so did all of her men. They traveled as a group for the most part, though when Neriena went with them she was disguised as a man. It would have caused far too much comment for a woman in finery to be traveling with a group of obvious sailors. There was no way to hide her men for what they were, they had been on the ocean for years longer then she had been alive in some cases, they were sailors to the bone and the breathed out the ocean when the spoke. She drank with her men as a sailor, stopped at a fancy hotel as a fine lady, and lived like a normal person almost for the first time since she had been fourteen.

Then the dirigible was done and the company contacted her at her address at the hotel. She went to the air field, signed the papers, handed over the money having been satisfied with the quality of the ship. Her men showed a few hours after she took possession and they set to learning the running of their new home. It was a lot to learn since most of the men considered the only place to sail to be water. There was more mental adjustment that had to be done then anything else, though there was also a lot of information to digest.

Since no one knew them to be anything but legitimate they were able to wait another month before actually taking off in order to learn everything they needed to know about the dirigible's working. It was useful to be right there on the air field because they could ask the men who created it about any details they were unsure about. Neriena was always very careful not to be the one who approached the men, she pretended to play the part of the rather stupid woman who was simply curious. It was the men of the crew who were sent to ask about this detail or that one, Neriena was starting to remember how society worked, she might not like it but it could be worked around.

The inside of the airship was a palace compared to the ship , there were enough individual berths that the crew each got their own space, an incredible thing to all of them. Neriena still took the great cabin but it wasn't a large difference and certainly wasn't grander since it had originally been meant as the crew's bunking area. Since they weren't carrying passengers however the crew was placed in the passenger area rather then having to share a room.

To be continued...

Neriena Wordsmith VI

Since it was a democracy Neriena decided to give the crew a say in their fate. She called the meeting while they were in their favorite hiding spot off of the coast of an island that was nowhere near the shipping lanes. Where there were no shipping lanes there were no naval ships, or at least that's what they hoped. Neriena knew better then anyone that they were going to need a lot of quiet time to talk things out. No decision was made quickly in the crew where everyone wanted to drink on a problem and then drink on the solution. Neriena had banned actual physical fighting on the ship but all that meant was that the debate had to be paused so that the people who insisted on fighting could go on shore and sort out their differences.

Neriena was amazed to find how much the men under her command had gone from unwilling pirates to looking for ways to continue with the life style. A few of them were looking at ways that they could go back to main society but many of them had discovered that they liked the freedom and had no desire to leave Neriena. She hadn't expected this and therefore had no plan for the crew staying together.

Neriena ordered that they take newspapers from any ship that they captured, for the purpose of reading what was being said about them, but these newspapers gave them the answer to their problem as well. Technology had been advancing in Europe and the Americas since Neriena had left them and now there were dirigibles in the air. Rare as they were there were already companies allowing them for sale to the very wealthy and bored. Neriena had wealth and could see a new and unpatroled area to branch out into. No one was exploiting it yet but she could see a whole new market. If they were going to be the last of the sea pirates she would see that they were also the first air pirates.

It was a mission that the other pirates trusted Neriena with and that was an honor for her since they really shouldn't have trusted anyone. Neriena was to go into New York City, dressed as a proper lady. To the shock of the entire crew that was what she had been storing in the chest in her room, she had an entire wardrobe of gowns that she had been slowly amassing. The moment the secret was out she put enough to have paid for three times the clothing in the shared pot for everyone to see. The last thing she wanted if they were going to continue working together was suspicions that she was holding out on them. They might fear her but fear would only get her so far before and when the fear was worn out she would have another mutiny on her hands and she wasn't so confident in her ability that she thought she could defeat another. Few captains even survived one of them, Neriena could already count herself among the strong and the lucky. The gesture of her honesty put her crew in a good mood and they cheered when she appeared on deck for the first time looking like a fine western woman.

Walking down the streets of New York again, and in a dress, was a strange experience for Neriena. She had no fear of being recognized and this time her confidence was well founded. She was just another well dressed woman in a street full of well dressed women. She knew better then to go even close to her old haunts around five points, as tempting as it was, she would have been robbed the second that her fine dress appeared among those buildings. She was also painfully aware of the amount of money she was carrying on her person. It was all from her personal share of the treasure instead of out of the common fund, she wanted to have that much control of the vessel at least. It made her feel more justified in being the captain if she was the one who had bought their ship.

The offices of the makers of dirigibles had been mentioned in the newspaper and she found her way to them without too much trouble. There she had more problems then she had expected however. The main problem she had thought she was going to have was was explaining where the money came from but the privileged rich came through many times in such an office and so that was not even brought up. The most questions she got was about being a woman conducting such a large item of business without a man present. She had grown so used to her crew and being in control of everything, or not recognized as a woman at all, that the response caught her totally unprepared.

To be continued...

Neriena Wordsmith V

Whether the crew slept at all that night was questionable but they didn’t dare talk either. The next day the watch was piped up like normal and while the entire crew was still uncomfortable and Neriena still walked the deck with a pistol in her hands at all times, the ship almost went back to normal. Habit was stronger then the shock of sudden events and while there was some awkward shifting when Neriena had some sailors go into her cabin to scrub the blood out of the floor boards with holy stones, even then no one said much. That wasn’t to say that Neriena trusted them, the key to the weapons locker was tucked firmly in her clothing and it was a small comfort to know that they would have to kill her before they got the weapons.

At midday she had spirits piped up and that caused much relaxation in the crew. She even ordered double ration which made some of the crew very brave and one of them finally stood up and asked her if she had been serious that they were becoming pirate. She told them very solemnly that she had been and that anyone who didn’t want to be a pirate she would drop off on the next land they came to. There wasn’t a single sailor that didn’t understand the implication, to be hung for piracy if they got caught was a gamble, and one that might pay off, to be marooned was almost certain death. Few people were ever found after they had been marooned. It was true that pirates had disappeared from the seas several decades before which would make them all alone against a sea of enemies but most of the sailors still liked their chances better on the ship.

The few sailors who had decided that they would rather not turn to a life of crime with a rope at the end were locked away by their former mates and as a crew they started to draw up the articles under which they would sail. Neriena understood well enough that if they were going to turn pirate she would have to follow the rules that had been tradition if they sailors were going to. That meant that she could no longer hold on to all of the power as captain. She had enjoyed her last moment of true power when she had allowed double rations and ordered the men to be locked up who wouldn’t follow her. From here on out if they men wanted to drink they could, if they wanted to eat they could, and they didn’t have to follow her orders unless they were attacking. Those were the conditions she had placed on herself by her decision the night before on what to do. They all signed the article they had drawn up, using the knowledge that most sailors had about the history of the sea as their guide of what the articles should contain. Everyone had heard the stories about pirates at one time or another. There was one article that everyone decided carefully toe around that had normally been in the pirate articles of old. That was the one saying that women weren’t allowed on board. No one was brave enough to mention such an article in front of Neriena who still had a loaded pistol in hand. While pirate ships were technically democracies the strongest had always had more say and more respect and Neriena intended to be numbered among the strong.

Few ships were armed like Neriena’s had been once you left the waters of Asia. No one expected there to be pirates anymore and there weren’t any wars going on at that time to cause people to be cautious. There were usually a few gentlemen with pistols, some sailors with knives, but unless the ship was going to less tamed waters they didn’t carry cutlasses like Neriena’s ship did. Neriena began throwing the valuable but traceable cargo she had picked up in Asia overboard, as much as it pained her to do so, and replacing it with far less traceable money, jewelry, watches, and uncertified bonds.

Neriena was ruthless in her new trade, she knew that she had to be and when the occasion called for it she was good at ruthless. She marooned the men that she had said she was going to maroon, shot anyone, pirate or prisoner, who dared to challenge her, and made herself so feared that ships began surrendering rather then even trying to fight. Once her crew was truly committed to the life and knew they had to escape they threw themselves into it with an equal will and not one of them didn’t admire her for the way that she controlled every situation with an iron grasp. Had you mentioned their attempted mutiny to them they would have laughed at the thought that they had believed a woman couldn’t handle a ship.

Within six months of the trade, and with the knowledge that the navy was now after them, everyone knew it was time for a change. These were no longer healthy times to be a pirate and it was a known fact that they would not escape justice forever if they kept it up. Within that scant six months they each had enough of the treasure as their share that they would never have to work again and no one dared ask how much their captain had. They also didn’t ask her what was in the chest in her cabin, the one that was never opened. In theory they had signed the articles that said that not a penny would be taken off of the ships without being fairly split between them but no one in the crew would challenge the captain. She was allowed to have her secrets.

To be continued...

Neriena Wordsmith IV

At first Neriena blew off the rumors that were going around about her being female, she didn't think that anyone would believe him. Having been a sailor she should have known better, sailors were as a lot a very superstitious group. Rumor quickly became fact in everyone's mind even though they had no proof of her gender either way. Once the crew got to this point Neriena could feel her power slipping away, no one was listening to her anymore, owner and captain or not, no one was going to take orders from a woman.

With her power completely undermined her first mate naturally gained power. He would tell her, when he told her to get out of the captain's cabin that it was no longer her place, that the entire reason he has signed on the ship was because he knew he could take her ship. It was at that point that Neriena snapped, she had decided that she wouldn't fight the mutiny but all it took was her first mate gloating and she couldn't keep her temper. Legal action had been the first thing on her mind but with rage filling her mind she simply pounced.

The first mate was a tactical person, devious, but he had always been an officer and had always gone after the weak. He had considered his unsuspecting female captain to be one of the weak, and therefore he hadn't prepared himself for a physical attack. He never had a chance, she had kept her habit from when she had been a sailor of always keeping a knife on her. Standing over his body Neriena knew that she was in trouble, she had now officially murdered someone and there was no way for her to cover it up. The moment that she stepped onto a port she knew that she would be arrested. Very calmly she stood up, and decided to do something.

The crew, which had known what the first mate was going in to do, was crowded around the cabin door. Not a few of them were shocked when their captain came out dressed in a kimono and her hair down long for the first time they had ever seen. The discrepancies in this appearance was the blood splattered across her face and the weapons in her hands. A blood stained knife in one, and a pistol in the other, another pistol was jammed into her sash. The pistol was pointed out at the crew. The crew had nothing that they could do, weapons weren't available to the common sailors, the most any of them had was a knife. All the guns and cutlasses were locked in the captain's cabin and Neriena was holding the only key.

With the crew at gun point she ordered someone to go into her cabin and clean up what was left of the first mate. It made a gruesome example to be dragged out on deck for all to see. She let him lay there for a few minutes, not saying anything else, and then ordered it thrown overboard like trash. That was when she announced they were turning pirate. Everyone was so shocked that there were hardly any arguments. It helped that she spent the entire night pacing in front of the forecastle with both pistols at ready making sure to walk heavily so they could hear that she was their. She knew psychological warfare, and she was good at it.

To be continued...

Neriena Wordsmith III

This was, it turned out, incorrect. European women were rare in Hong Kong and as she walked down the street she had the uncomfortable knowledge that everyone was staring at her. It turned out that one of the people who was staring at her was her captain. She only realized it though when he grabbed her arm. She knew she was in trouble immediately, his face said it all.

The captain had the decency not to tell the crew what had happened with Neriena, which was some relief for her because these things got around sailing communities faster then most people imagined. Instead he told the crew that Neriena had jumped ship and such things happened often enough that it was no cause for comment. The ship sailed with Neriena hiding, in disgrace, stranded in a strange land where she didn't speak the language.

Neriena was above all other things a survivor. Trapped in a land where she had no friends she took to doing what she could. Sometimes she dressed as a man, sometimes as a woman, depending on both her mood and circumstances. She took on honest jobs when she could find them, and stole when she couldn't. The fact that she could fight came in handy more then once, as did the grace and balance she had gained as a sailor. She quickly started to become famous in the area, first as European female, then as a European female who would do horrible things to anyone who tried to mess with her, and finally as an incredible housebreaker that they never pinned anything on.

As she became more famous people began to seek her out to do jobs for them. The underground community of Hong Kong respected her, and she became a leader of their world. It caused her problems and it didn't lead to a restful life for her but she made lots of money and lived well. That was all fine and well but she realized that she was missing something. She had fallen in love with the sea and though Hong Kong was a port it wasn't the same with her on land. Since money was no problem she decided finally to just dress as a man once again and buy herself a ship. That way this time she wouldn't have the problem of following under someone else. She would also have more privacy as the captain then she would be able to dream of as a hand before the mast.

She bought a fine little ship, a hermaphrodite schooner, as versatile a ship as could be found. It was the best ship she could think of, a cargo ship, but one that could be armed to a fair extent, and could sail in any waters. It wasn't a new ship but it had been well cared for and she was confident that so long as she took good care of it it would serve her well. The crew that she was able to assemble was a rabble of the docks, locals who were more used to sailing rivers then ocean, and sailors of all nations who had jumped European ships.

Neriena showed up on board the ship as the captain, and everyone excepted it, it helped that she was dressed as a man. The sailors had never seen her before, she had hired them all through an agent, but sailors were a fairly resigned group when it came to their leaders. There were good captains and bad captains and while sailors tried not to work under bad captains they had accepted a long time ago that it was bound to happen every once in a while. They did know that she was knew as a captain though, which meant that she was under much scrutiny. Not only did they want to know if she was someone who knew what she was doing, they also wanted to know if she was going to be strict or a loose captain.

They loaded the schooner with goods that Neriena had heard were selling well in Europe and set sail. She hadn't considered her fame in Hong Kong and the fact that she might have at least someone sailing with her who knew her for who she was. She has dressed as a woman often enough that her gender had become fairly accepted in the city and her disguise as a man was not enough to hide her features. The person who had realized who she was, was her first mate. He was more intelligent then she had expected any of her men to be, which was her miscalculation. He was smart enough to bid his time for one thing. He waited until they were half way through the voyage before he broke his peace.

To be continued...

Neriena Wordsmith II

It was after the first two weeks, after everyone had started to get comfortable in their new home, and get to know one another as well, that trouble started. It was bound to happen eventually, it happened on every voyage she was assured. With everyone shoved as close together as people on a ship were, tempers were bound to flair. The largest problem with this was that all sailors carried a knife, Neriena included, though she had never considered it as a weapon before. The fight was over quickly, one of the sailors clearly not as accustomed to wielding a blade as the other and the officers rushing to break up the fight. A knife fight was dangerous for the ship's well being since a ship could lose a valuable member for no good reason. It was an unimportant incident for most of the crew but it burned itself into the mind of Neriena who began to question whether or not she would survive someone coming at her with a knife if the occasion arose. This became a driving force for her and she threw herself into finding out everything she could about the art of fighting the way that sailors did it, all fists and knives. She was small and therefore would be at a disadvantage in such a fight and when she was high up on the mast, trying to keep her mind for the dizzying fall below her, she would distract herself by thinking of ways that she could use her small stature to her advantage. Of course this was all hypothetical at this point but it was the start of turning her into a good fighter.

The lifestyle of a sailor was designed to suck you in, once you were a sailor it was very difficult to be anything else. Few people ever left the life of a sailor to become shop keepers for instance, or actors. It was a very specific set of skills that you learned and they never truly applied to any other walk in life. Once Neriena had sailed on one ship she found it easy to find others to sail on, and soon she was even signing up for longer voyages.

Four years passed in this way, uneventful for the reader but important for Neriena. She got into fights just as she had feared and while she was in danger of dying the first few times until the fights were broken up, with time her hypothetical fighting moves were put into action and did her well. She continued to hide her gender and she was good enough at it, and so accustomed to it, that no one suspected her. Secrecy became second nature to her and soon she no longer had to think about what she was doing because it was habit.

It was in China where she finally slipped up, well in Hong Kong which was the only place that foreign ships were allowed. The many demure women in their lovely kimonos made Neriena remember when she herself had worn dresses, though what she had worn had never been made of silk. She had a good portion of her pay in her pocket, like all sailors it would be gone by the time the ship left, but for the time being she could squander her pay on whatever she wanted. What she found she really wanted at this moment was a kimono.

The man at the shop didn't look at her at all oddly when she walked in and asked him for a kimono and gave him the sizes. She imagined that he thought she was buying it for some sweetheart or as a keepsake. She made sure he wrapped up the floral patterned dress tight in a bundle to hide what it was as she walked through the streets. Once she was back at her cheap room though she struggled into the kimono as best as she was able. She was forced to admit that for her first gown in four years she would not have chosen something so complicated.

To be continued...

Neriena Wordsmith

Raised in the corrupt five points slum of New York city, Neriena Wordsmith was in a great hurry to leave home. The small tenement building that she was raised in was very instrumental in making her long for travel, five people lived in the miserable two room apartment. As soon as she turned fourteen, rather then joining her mother as a ill-paid seamstress as had been expected, she ran away from home. She took with her an outfit of her brother's, which was loose on her but not to the point of making her stand out, and a few dollars.

Many children ran away from home in that place, of course most of them were boys, but Neriena had always been a bit of a tom boy and saw no reason why her destination should be any different then that of most of the boys. She headed to the docks to see if she couldn't find a job on one of the out bound ships. It didn't matter to her where the ship was going, so long as it was away from New York.

Dressed in her brother's clothing and with a cap on her head Neriena could pass herself as any number of the street boys that ran around the area of Five points. Even her longish hair didn't make her stand out since hair cuts were not a common concern in those parts. Even if her hair was slightly longer then usual it wasn't longer by enough to cause comment. Neriena had heard enough talk by the sailors who sometimes wandered five points for the cheap entertainment the slum offered to know that it would do no good to simply walk up to a ship ask to be taken in. Instead she went to the taverns that the sailors haunted and just sat outside one of them. Some of the sailors were cruel to her, some of them ignored her but finally one stopped to talk to her in a friendly way and she latched on to him. She told him that her name was Ned and that she was thinking of going to see and he right off offered to put in a word for her with his captain, though he added that she would be better off staying on dry land, for the life was hard. The newly baptized Ned assured the sailor that being a sailor couldn't be any harder then life on land as so the deal was sealed.

With an advance in her pay Neriena was able to buy a fully fitted sea chest, though she was told later by her sailor acquaintance that she had paid far too much for the kit. He used it as an example of just how careful she was going to have to be in this new life she had chosen. He assured her that everyone tried to take advantage of sailors, she was to find that this was a constant lament from him and learn to accept it as the truth. No one seemed to be on the side of the common sailors, not their officers, not the government, not the law, and not the general population. Still it was the life she had chosen for herself of her own free will and she was determined not to regret it.

In the close quarters of the forecastle it was difficult for her to hide her gender but she managed it with much care. Unlike the others she never took of her clothes to sleep, no matter how uncomfortable they were, and she was careful not to use the ship's head when anyone else was around. They considered her odd but they were odd people in their own ways so while they might tease her they let her be. That wasn't to say they weren't rough people.

The first two weeks of their voyage were uneventful for the regular hands but filled with pain and confusion for Neriena who was soft and unused to the harsh world of life on a ship. Her position was the lowest on the ladder of hands before the mast and she was not used kindly. The only person under her in the hierarchy was the nine year old cabin boy but that was only superficial because he clearly knew more of the ocean then she did. Some of the older hands took her under their wing and she learned, but it was still not one of the most enjoyable times of her life.

To be continued...

Little Chicken V

The figure was trapped in the chair I noticed. What I had taken to be it shifting was in fact it thrashing against it's bonds, which had firmly secured it to the chair. I could see it's body shift as it struggled but every time it shifted the bonds shifted as well. The glowing blue being could not escape no matter how much it struggled and it seemed as if with time it had given up completely on the idea of escaping really and was now only trying half heartedly out of habit.

Knowing that it was restrained bolstered my courage greatly and I walked into the room more or less fearlessly. At least with much less fear then I had felt since I had fallen through the hole in the tunnel. The creature stared at me, or at least I think it did, I couldn't really see any eyes but I felt an intense focus on me of some sort. I wanted to say something but I wasn't even sure if it was intelligent or not. If it wasn't intelligent I would feel like a fool for trying to engage it in conversation, what ever it was.

“Now why would anyone trap you?” I settled on finally. If it was intelligent I would get an answer from it, if it wasn't intelligent then I could write off my question as having been rhetoric. I couldn't have possibly guessed the reaction my words were going to have on the figure however. It began to grow, and as it grew it's shape changed. Now it was huge, it's seat having grown with it, until I was standing in front of a seated giant. It was human shaped now however, and human looking, if you could ignore the fact that it was a mix of black and blue, and glowed slightly. It opened it's mouth and made a grunt.

“This trap was built a long time ago,” the figure said finally, after a couple more grunts. It was as if it had to get used to it's new voice.

“But why?” I asked. “And what are you?”

“I'm the sky. The people who lived here a long time ago looked up at me and realized that I was large and thought me a solid. They thought they would be able to eat me and they sought to capture me because they suffered large famines.” The sky, if that was truly what it was, explained to me.

“The sky fell only a couple years ago, that wasn't a long time ago and there were no famines at the time,” I pointed out.

“Their magic was never completed. They all died out before they could finish the spell because of how complex the spell is and the hunger in the land as well as a drought that plagued them. The land then covered their civilization and I thought myself safe. I hadn't thought about the one remaining aspect of the spell and how dangerous it was for me. What they had needed was a pool full of clean fresh water, something that couldn't be had in their drought blighted land. It is to be had when water drips through the ground and slowly falls into the cavern however. The pool filled finally and I was suddenly dragged down to this room that they had built so long ago with no warning and completely against my will.”

“You're trying to tell me that they sky has been captured, that's why it fell?” I asked. I was having a hard enough time believing that that part of the story was true, let alone the idea that what I was talking to was the sky. The sky simply nodded gravely and after everything I had seen I didn't actually have the energy to think of something to dispute this idea. Belief hadn't been triggered but I had resigned myself to the idea that it was an odd day that wasn't going to get any less odd with time for all appearances.

To be continued...

Little Chicken IV

In retrospect it would have been the wisest course of action to return to where they would come and save me the moment I got a sign of the light going out but I thought that I had some time. Every light I had ever had would go more and more dim before finally going out, giving you plenty of warning and a chance to look around a little more. In this case the light was not so polite, it went out suddenly and I was a good distance from where I should have been with no way of knowing exactly where it was.

I started to wander blindly, it was dangerous I knew, but I had to get back to where they could find me easily. I kept having a mental image of them give up on me and me being trapped in the dark silence forever. Off in some far corner of the cavern where they would never think to look and I wouldn't be able to hear them. I sat down, this close to the hole I decided, they would be sure to find me when they looked even if I wasn't instantly visible, something I wasn't sure of. For all I knew at this point I was right under the hole and just couldn't tell it.

My resolve not to move until rescued was shattered when I saw the shimmer of blue light at the end of the cavern. I suspect now that I had only sat there for fifteen minutes or so but at the time it seemed as if it had been at least an hour. At that point I had been tense for so long in the dark that I welcomed any light that there was, even if it was a bluish color. I went towards it without even really thinking about what I was doing just because it was light. I would have walked into the mouth of a lion if it glowed at that point.

I walked for far longer then I thought I was going to. The light had seemed far away even when I had been sitting down but now that I was walking it didn't seem to get any closer. A couple of times I ran into a wall and had to go around it. As I groped through the gaps in the wall I started to realize that it wasn't just a gap, it was a doorway. Just as the cavern had been man made, so it seemed was the section was in now. That comforted me somewhat, it meant at least the part I was in had lasted this long and the ceiling had been shored up at least at one time.

Finally I reached a doorway that was filled with light so completely that I had no doubts that I had reached my destination. I peered into the light and saw a figure was the source of the light. It was sitting on a throne in the middle of the room. I finally decided to enter the room, having come this far it seemed ridiculous that I should be afraid to actually confront what I had come to confront. Even if it was a large, glowing blue figure.

To be continued...

Little Chicken III

Now instinct and logic were at odds with one another. Instinct made me want to pace, it was restless with the wait, and the fear. Logic told me to wait until the rescuers came down and found me, moving around a lot in an emergency such as this one would make me more difficult to find. Instinct won, as it so often does in times of stress. I paced around the cavern, light in front of me to keep me from meeting any unpleasant surprises. As I walked I tried to imagine what was going on at the moment on the surface. First I imagined they were annoyed because they would think I was slacking off or something of that sort. After a period of time I supposed they would cease to be annoyed and start being anxious. It was sooner then I had calculated, though I had no watch to be sure, that I heard someone above me and saw a light from the ceiling of the cave that obviously was shining through the hole I had fallen down.

“Are you down their? Are you alright?” asked a voice called down as I walked back towards the hole.

“I'm bruised but fine,” I assured the disembodied voice, now standing directly under the hole and looking up. I still couldn't see the speaker because of their lantern but I assumed they could see me. There was some talk up above that wasn't directed at me and I figured it was the voice speaking into the intercom and someone responding. The tunnel down into the earth wasn't wide enough for two people to stand comfortably, especially now that a portion of the floor was gone.

“We don't have a long enough rope to pull you up, you fell pretty far,” said the voice. “We hadn't thought we were going to need such a long rope for a while so they are going to have to go get one. That is of course if you can climb. If not we can rig and harness.”

“I can climb fine, just get the rope. How long will it be? Do you know?” I asked.

“It's a ways into town, and then to find a place with a rope as long as we need. It might be a couple hours. Just sit tight though, we'll get you out for sure. Hold on a sec,” there was more intercom communication and a package landed next to me.

“There's some food you can eat while you wait so you won't even be missing lunch,” the voice said cheerfully, and then it was gone and I was alone again.

I opened the package and found some sandwiches and since the voice had been kind enough to think of them I ate them before doing anything else. It kept my mind busy which was also nice. Once I was done with the food though I was more restless then ever. Knowing it would be at least a couple hours before I was rescued made me feel even more trapped and helpless then I had before. I started pacing again.

When I say I was pacing I don't mean in the back and forth sense of the word, instead it was in an aimless ellipse shape that continued to get wider and wider as I went around were the hole in the ceiling was. It was in the middle of one of these rounds that I realized that while the voice had remembered to feed me it had forgotten about my light, which was growing visibly more dim as it ran out of batteries. I never went down into the ground without backup batteries, but they were in my bag, and my bag was somewhere above my head where the floor hadn't fallen. Very soon I would be in the middle of the earth, with no light. Not a pleasant thought by any means and I started to wish that I had received my pack instead of food.

To be continued...

Little Chicken II

The reason that I have jumped two years ahead in time is that I did something very different the morning that I have jumped to. I started to dig, this was not because I had any true desire to, nor a burning wish to find out what was under the crust. I was ordered to dig by my boss, one of the more well known scientists of our time. I had been hired for the soul purpose of digging so that was what I did, one shovel full at a time so the team behind me could analyze every speck of dirt carefully. They were trying to find any trace of the sky that might remain. I couldn't see the point, I mean it had been gone for so long that I was sure it was gone. Still times were hard and there was no way that I could turn down a paying job like this one.

It was slow going since I had to shovel slowly for the people behind me to sift and test. We only got down a few feet that first day but by the end of the month they were having to lower a ladder and a light for me every day, as well as a bucket for me to put each shovel full in. I wondered if the scientists even knew what they were looking for, had they ever taken a sample of the sky before it fell to know what went into it? I never got to talk to the actual scientists though, I was a lowly employee who only ever got to talk to the aids, I never access to the brains to ask. I did my job as I was told and got my paycheck and felt no true investment in whether or not they found where the sky went or some lost city. I had already dug through some ruins of what they told me were long dead cities.

I guess the scientists did know what they were looking for because they grew excited as I dug and moved me to a new spot where I had to start the hole all over. They went faster now, with less caution and less fear. With them going faster I was forced to as well and at the end of every day I could feel my muscles scream at me for the work that I was doing.

When I hit the rock I sighed and reached for the intercom to report it. I could hardly see the light from the sun, far, far above me. There was no way for me to hoist a large rock out of the hole by myself and sometimes the project would be put on hold for several day stretches to pull the object out before work could continue. I stepped on the rock though as I reached for the rock and it sunk under my weight. That didn't seem right at all, this deep underground rocks had never sunk under my feet before. I stomped a few more times experimentally and the rock gave out under my feet completely and I fell. As I fell I grabbed for anything I could reach, which turned out to be the suspended light. While the cord on the light was strong enough to support something as light as a lantern it turned out not to be made for human weight and rather then holding me up it came down with me.

I was in a cavern when I stood from my fall, shaken by the distance though I could feel no broken bones. I had rolled when I fell, just like I had always been told to, and that had saved me from a lot of damage. Holding the light up to the walls of the cavern I realized it was all man made, rather then the rock it had looked like at first it was slime covered bricks. It had probably been the hall of some castle or a long forgotten street in the city I had already dug through the remains of. I looked around the best I could with my light, afraid of finding skeletons but I found none. I was all alone in this huge expanse with no way of getting in touch with the bosses to tell them I had fallen. I knew from past experience that even if I shouted they wouldn't be able to understand me from as far away as they were. I would have to wait until they started wondering what had happened to me, which I knew probably wouldn't be long. All it would take would be the shovels full of dirt to stop and they would start wondering. If they couldn't get me on the intercom they would send someone down to check on me for sure. I would just have to wait.

to be continued...