Generations ago, the industrial revolution gave mankind the power of machines. To create and destroy on an unprecedented scale, greater than ever before. Little did we know, this power would come with a price. Our greed and thirst for more lead to the world's destruction. Storms grew in power, wiping away cities in a matter of minutes. Water dried up to leave vast deserts in what were once oceans, and millions died from the resulting environmental shift.
The governments of the world struggled to cope, and many fell. Traditional means of transportation and contact where now impossible, with the environment being completely destroyed. The oceans turned acidic, to the point that all ships would dissolve before they left sight of the coastline. Populations grew distant and lost connection, until the invention of the air balloon revolutionized our ability to travel. Once again the powers of Europe grew and reconnected their old holdings.
Contact with the Americas was lost long ago, millions of refugees fled east across what was the Atlantic, bringing with them stories of super volcanoes blanketing the sky. The displacement lead to violence and riots, as people protested the mass migration. Eventually, these refuges managed to find homes in the countries that once laid claim to their home colonies. People from the States and Canada migrated towards the English Isles, while Latin Americans fled to Spain and Portugal, as well as new colonial holdings in North Africa.
But a new power grew from these ashes of destruction and conflict. A man by the name of Niels Juel rose to power in central Europe, with the promise of uniting the continent under one almighty banner. He's already spread his army of air ships east, being blocked only by the United Arab Empire in the south, and the warring nomads in the Asia. His country now has its eyes set for the west, encroaching upon the borders of France and Spain's Africa. The new British government, which managed to unite the entirety of the British Isles in a loosely conjoined parliament, has seen the coming war and begun preparing its air force for the inevitable. Her forces are lead by High Admiral Artose, a veteran of the Arctic Raider wars, and a sound tactician who has pledged to stop the encroaching empire from taking hold of France.
Having recently met with the French government at Paris, Captain Church Shepard and his crew are returning home to New London aboard the HMS Normandy, a nimble Squid class airship.
Ch 1
While I was at Sea
Church
A cool breeze on a warm summer's night, these were the little moments that I lived for. The comforting of tiny portions in time that prove to be the most relaxing. And nothing provided such comfort, as flying my ship across the crystal clear skies of the English Channel. My hands, sturdy at the wooden helm, one fist clenched firmly at the throttle, while the crew slept comfortably below the wooden deck next to the hull armor. These silent nights might seem to some to be boring and ill conceived, but to me they were the greatest gift of my nights away from home.
I had been a captain of the British Navy for only a short time, one of the youngest allowed to pilot a ship, and one of the few Squid pilots to have any competence whatsoever. Squids were fast ships, but brittle as hell, with a hull so thin most captains wouldn't dare fly in without the support of a heavily armed Galleon coming with. Of course, I wasn't most captains. Not only had I excelled at missions shaking both my ship and crew to their limits, but relished in it. Flying head on into a heavily armored enemy and ramming them with my paper thin hull as my crew grabbed one another and screamed in fear, that was just another Saturday night for me. It was because of this rather unconventional flying that my fellow captains had labeled me as the "Crazy American" with no regards for sanity. But there were few that could match my skill in a dogfight.
I watched as the sun slowly rose from the horizon, basking me and the ship in its warmth, and revealing the ocean of desert sand below. One could have mistaken it for crashing waves in the darkness of night, but now it acted as a blinding mirror, baking the underside of the ship with the sun's unrelenting heat. Pulling the throttle back, I waited for a moment as the ship's momentum kept it drifting further for a few seconds longer. Once the vessel had stopped completely, I took a moment to appreciate her durability and grace, taking special note of the HMS Normandy painted on the balloon above me, the white paint chipping off the side of the brown surface. Despite her flaws and age, she'd managed to sail from Paris to the desert separating Britain from mainland Europe in only a day's time. But with her engines running constantly, the old girl would start to over heat quickly in the desert sun.
Turning hard on my heels, I made my way over to the main deck, where the helium, flamethrower, and hull armor all had their positions nestled snugly in their respective places. My crew, being the lazy bunch of dogs they were, had managed to find a few hours shut eye below the deck, where crudely made hammocks hung from the deck floor. There was barely enough room for them down there, their backs scratched the ground as they swung slowly from side to side, with barely fifty centimeters between the deck and the bottom of the ship.
Taking a moment to clear my throat, I made an extra effort to be as loud as was seemingly possible. "Wake up! Time to get up and on your feet, I want the deck cleaned and the guns buffed, move it!"
As expected, the three that were my crew jumped from their beds and crawled out of the crawl space.
"Morning, Cap," Godo said as he climbed up the few stairs past me. He always seemed to wear a smile on his face, a trait that would sometimes drive me crazy, especially when he would chew that ridiculous piece of hay sticking out of his mouth like some kind of tobacco pipe.
Blueberry followed closely behind, giving me a pilot nod as she followed Godo to the balloon's gas container. She was shy, not saying much unless directly asked, odd considering she colored her hair a bright blue that contrasted heavily with her dark skin, and only But she did her job well enough that I was willing to giver her the privacy she wanted.
Last to show his face was Elliot, who stood up from the crawl space in a sluggish haze, still asleep under his soggy eyes. "Well good morning, Lieutenant," I spat, somewhat ruder than I had intended. "Good of you to come up and smell the roses."
"If it's all the same, sir," he started, rubbing his eyes clear of the blinding morning light. "I'd rather leave the roses unsmelt."
"Elliot."
"Yessir," he said, perking up a bit more now.
"Go check the guns, then get on breakfast," I ordered, marching myself back up the stairs to help with the Normandy's morning inspections. It was customary on long excursions to examine every possible component frequently, especially crossing the channel's dust storms. No captain wanted to be stuck in the desert fighting against pirates, who were said to travel by frequently looking for easy prey.
"Hey Church." I heard my name called from above, prompting me to crane my neck to the sky. "Got some thinning on the lining up here," Godo said, haning onto the ratline attached to the balloon above. "Nothing major, but something I need to look at when we reach port."
"Noted," I said, continuing my sort trip to the wheel. Squids weren't particularly large ships, far from it, they were built small and nimble for combat purposes only. The oddity of my crew taking this long excursion was only because of the need for speed, for which my ship was one of the fastest.
Stopping by the balloon's helium canister, I kicked the metal lightly, startling the body beneath. It took a moment for Blueberry to crawl up from beneath the canister, startled by the sharp clank of my kick. "And how does it look then, Blue?"
"Fine," she grumbled, not willing to look me in the eye. "Godo will need to clear the filter, I was just about to check the engines."
"Get on it then, Blueberry," I responded curtly.
"Aye Cap," she answered, turning around up the stairs behind her to look over the two main engines, and the mine-launcher that sat between them.
"Um, Church." Again, I heard my name called from behind, this time from the bow of the ship. Standing next to the flamethrower, with his spyglass pointed towards the west, Elliot was beckoning for my presence. Taking care not to fall down the stairs to the armor, I walked up to him, my hands held tightly behind my back in the same manner I so often had when walking.
"What is it then?" I asked, my tone slightly annoyed. Elliot was known to give any kind of excuse to avoid the morning chores of the ship, giving any kind of ploy just to procrastinate working by a few measly minutes.
He held out the spyglass for me to take, keeping his gaze pointed in the same direction the entire time. "I think there's something out there," he said, pointing off to where the sky met the horizon. Taking the tool from him, I held it aloft in my hands, peeping into the small piece of glass at its rear with one eye. The scene now magnified greatly, and I scanned the general direction for whatever Elliot must have seen.
"I don't see anything out there," I started, before something dark against the clear blue sky caught my eye. "Wait a moment." Turning the front lens in my hands, I magnified on the object. It was apparent to me now that it was in motion, traveling ever closer to us at a brisk pace. Focusing the blurred spyglass, it wasn't long until I managed to identify the profile of a Pyramidion, a small and sturdily built ship with an armored balloon that met in a point at the front.
"Is it a ship?" he asked me, his voice shaking at the thought.
"Looks to be, but she ain't flying any colors," I answered, trying to find the tell tale colors of the Union Jack. There were only three possibilities at who this ship belonged to. Either it was scavengers, looking through the dunes for fallen vessels hidden in the sand. Or it could have been another Navy ship, flying to some location on orders from above, like our own. However, the possibility of pirates seemed all the more likely.
Bane
Finding an easy picking in the sky, that's what I lived for. For the thrill of watching another ship's crew panic at the sight of my Dancer barreling down on them like the devil himself, that's how I got off on my weekends.
So, low and behold, right as the crew and I decide to head back home, a single ship flies into my hands. A nice and easy military Squid, a very expensive ship that would give a pretty pence back home in the arctic. If we could catch her, squids were notorious for out speeding everything except, save for the devil himself, a title I aspired to take.
"Alright ya scurvy dogs," I shouted, taking up my position on the helm. "Get that gat loaded Morbose. And so help me god, if you miss with that harpoon, Callum..."
"Yeah yeah," he shouted from the scaffold above, interrupting me. "You'll feed my legs to Ruij, and fire the rest of me off the front. I've heard it before."
Grumbling, I glared up at him as I pushed the throttle to full. "Hey, brother," I shouted, above the rising volume of the wind and sand. "Do your job right then! And Ruij, make sure the engines are chemed. Squids are notorious for bringing flamers." Turning my head over my shoulders, I only saw my engineer give a nod in acknowledgement, before running to the engines behind the cabin room.
It took a moment, but the Dancer managed to reach her full speed, pushing the hunk of metal and wood as fast as she might go. She was a slow ship to say the least, but she was tightly built and manageable for long excursions away from port. Perfect for trying to nab the perfect catch.
"Gat loaded," Morbose shouted, his body leaning over the gatling far above my head. He seemed almost as excited for this attack as I was, almost.
"Alright then boys, first catch of the day. Callum, raise the colors and ready the grappling hooks!"
"Aye aye, captain," the boy shouted, pulling the pulley next to his harpoon, to reveal the skull and crossbones to the world above.
Pushing down a switch above my wheel, I held on tight as the ship lurched forward. "Burning moonshine," I shouted, alerting the crew far too late to the fact. The wind picked up speed around us, and I could feel the thrill practically build up as our speed increased. Oh how I loved being a pirate!
AN: Note for those of you who don't know, the universe in this game is based upon the Steam Punk video game Guns of Icarus Online (Which is available on steam for a relatively low amount and I highly recommend if you want to play something new and unique), which is a post apocalyptic steam punk world where people fight in zeppelin type airships. These are the adventures of me and my merry clan mates as a tribute to all of those crazy bastards. With luck, hopefully others will like it as well =)!
And as always, thank you for reading.