Travels of Agamemnon chapter 1

I am braced in the door of the engine. My suit reaks of fear and sweat. My first time going out into the high wilderness atleast away from the ramshackle safety that I got inside the old “time turner”. The derelict engine can’t be more than a short leap. The winds buffet me but not at a terrifying speed. One last deep breath. I leap. Now suddenly I’m falling. My arms flailing. I hear myself scream. I’m puking in my mask.

I’m sitting bolt upright in my bunk on the time turner. I’m covered in cold sweat. It is as black as pitch. No sound besides the sound of the engine pumping and the lonely cry of a hurdy gurdy. I grope in the darkness hands passing items until it fell on the smooth metal of the flask. Bringing it close. One hand still shaking from the memory that I wish so badly was just a nightmare. Unscrewing the top before slowly bringing it to my lips.

“You don’t need that.” The deep gravel voice comes out of the dark.

“Damnit!” I had dropped the flask with the shock. The smell of the strong alcohol that was inside of it starting to fill my tiny room as it spilled onto my bedding.

A match lit in the dark. Moved slowly illuminating eyes as it was raised to a well patinened smoking pipe. The flame drawn down into the packed tobacco, with a long inhaled breath.

“How the hell you know what I need!” My response was petulant. Only answered by the glow of tobacco.

“You haven’t been the only one to wake up like that in that bed.” Another glow of the tobacco, slow exhale. “Not the only one that’s fallen the first time.”

“Its not my first time,” I reply sullenly. I can not say why I’m acting this way.

“I don’t mean when you playing on the side of the platform in New Winchester. I mean your first time actually jumping into the high wilderness.” He doesn’t react to me sullen tone. He simply keeps talking in his deep voice. Even after they are pulled in they never really stop falling. Count yourself lucky.”

My mind tries to tell me he is right. He has been on an engine since long before I was born. There is a feeling though. A wrongness that I am unable to shake. Will it ever leave me?

“At any rate, only water for you for the next week. If I find out you defied my order then you will stoke day and night until we return to a station.”

I don’t even bother with a reply. The commander stops by the head of my bed and sits a large tin cup besides me. Opened the hatch to the main passageway stepping out as the sound of the hurdy-gurdy grows. Then I am alone in the darkness again I pick up the cup. It isn’t cold and almost brackish from the engines water tanks, the must have been getting low, but it sent a chill down my body. Gods I had no idea just how thirsty I was. I drain the cup and find a pitcher waiting to refill it. I drain the cup three more times before I start feeling anywhere close to human again. Sitting on the edge of my cot I close my eyes and try to piece together the falling again.

Cyrus James Overtun, Master and Commander of Her Majesties Locomotive Agamemnon closed the door of his youngest crewmen’s cabin behind him. His pipe still clenched in his teeth with a thin trail of smoke rising from it. The boy would come out of it alright he figured. It was indeed something the first time you slipped from an engine into the overcoming strangeness of the high wilderness. The reason safety lines were required during all operations. He had known some Locomotives to not use safety lines at all and he found the whole idea of that preposterous. To loose good crew to simple accidents. He turned and walked towards the main part of the engine. Past the tune full groaning of the hurdy-gurdy. It’s player simply sitting and staring out of the hatch into the passageway, playing steadily. Mind as far away from the Agamemnon as he could manage. Overtun couldn’t really blame the man. The drowning followed him down the passage way with the steady beat of the Agamemnon’s engine as it’s back drop. The thundering of the engine as it supplied energy to the thrusters. Driving them through the high wilderness. Towards the possibility of death or glory in its unknown reaches. On towards the front. Coming to the controls. The engineer goggles on staring out into what was managed to be lit up by the engines light. Next to him the engines recorder, a hunched figure with fingers permanently blacked by the ink of his trade. Documenting even the most mundane events of the Agamemnon.

“Will the boy recover,” asked the recorder.

“I believe so. Though if not he will be far from the first that was swallowed by the wilderness and did not know it,” Overtun said. He walked to the map table, and checked what served as the engines compass. What at one time would have been the “cardinal directions” severed very little purpose now. But keeping the starts that served as them. Mostly the brightest starts in whichever given direction, kept them mostly true. As true as anything could be in the high wilderness.

“It was a mistake to even use him to check that wreck.”

“Was that the mistake?” The voice was that if the first officer, second in command of the Agamemnon.

“I don’t think this is the place Simon,”Overtun said not looking away from the charts.

“Very well but we are still very behind schedule now. The shipment is due in London in the next day or to. We must not be wasting precious time in treasure hunting and grave robbing.” Simon Gregson was first officer more by demand of the company that Overtun had be settled with. Efficiency was somewhat the name of the game. Or some attempt at it while blazing a path around the Reach. Overtun’s back ground was firmly in the area of service to the Queen. Though an incident with a man of higher birth had left him off the navel lists until he could get back in the good graces of the admiralty. Though scrounging for these trade companies would make it hard for him to do that. Valor was the only way to worm your way back into the good graces of the flint eyes stone hearts. Though there was very little valor to go around in the high wilderness. Just a promise of insanity and danger. Your future lost to the screaming winds.

It takes sometime but I’m feeling almost human again. I can still only capture small bits from my fall. I had jumped. It had seemed like such a small gap between the engines. Barely any room to fall. Then hitting that horrid biting wind, taking my breath an the images of falling in every direction. I barely felt the hard pull of the safety line as they pulled him back to the Agamemnon. Rough hands grabbing his sky suit. They shouldn’t have let me out of the fuel bins. Is all I can think with the memory of puking all of my meager breakfast on to the deck running through my mind. I wasn’t ready for a full share. Atleast Overtun has given me the shot. Maybe I should sneak off when we are next in Mew Winchester. Gods I could use a real drink. I swing my hatch door open. Walking down the passage way. Had to be a bottle somewhere close. Maybe even some honey. A nice trip away from this place on that would set me up to be sure. Just a little while. No one would notice. I try to keep my pace even. No need to make anyone curious by running. There are only 15 or so in the Memnon though. Surely non of them could be this far aft while we were moving. Even Rowen and his poor Hurdy-Gurdy has stopped. My hands are shaking. Why are they shaking. Almost there though. I can see a crack of light from the cabin that he keeps his stuff. Just a mouthful as I will pay him back. He has to be on watch and will never know anyways. I open the door slowly creeping toward a ruffled up bunk. I know he has to keep it there. The shakes still weigh on me. What stealth I had been trying to maintain left with the screaming need in my head. That must have been why what happened next surprised me.

Ellis Bathcat, all 6’4 of him came out of the darkness laying a large calloused had on my shoulder spinning me around to face a heavily scared face.

“Defying the boss is one thing,” my feet leave the deck. “Trying to steal from me is something very different.”

Face inches from mine. Breath stale and heavy with the smell of the alcohol I desire. My back meets the bulkhead hard. The breath pours out of my lungs.

“Water for you boy, and if I Ever catch you here again I will feed you to the sky.”

He threw me from the room.

*

Bathcat slammed the door behind him. Lighted a small oil lamp. That through out a warm light over a table covered with weapons. Razor sharp blades. Large barrels revolves. Shotguns with yawing barrels. He sat down heavily at his table. Reaching out to take up cleaning rag and the revolver that he had been working on when he heard the kids steps down the passage. The thought that he would dare try to steal from him, the damned whelp. He would make sure that the lesson of do not steal was learned even if he had to have the boy receive a good fogging. Not that the captain would let that happen.

He spun the cylinder of the revolver closing it with a snap and aiming down the barrel. The boy couldn’t even handle the jump to boarding. Gods thrice damned Whelp. The hammer smoothly. A slow pull. Clack. The large bore revolvers could punch holes in men that you could put a fist into. Bathcat licked his teeth at the though. It had been so long he had the pleasure of turning them on another man. Feeling the recoil on his hand. Watching the surprise fade away to nothing on his victims face. Taking his prize from them. The Captain had banned the taking of those. But what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt Bathcat.

I crash against the bulkhead outside Bathcats quarters, staying pressed up against the cool metal. A chill starts to hit my skin. It isn’t an interior bulkhead. On the other side is the high wilderness, and I can hear scratching through the metal. Likes it’s trying to come through the skin of the Memnon and finish off, what it had started. Row upon row of teeth razor sharp teeth to tear into him. To finish what it must have started when it was falling..

By the time Overtun saw the movement it was to late. Another engine screaming from around a blind spot of firmerment that was floating several yards away. The engineer yanked levers and spun the main wheel. Pressure fired out of the left of the engine swinging the back of the Memnon around.

“Arm the guns!” Overtun yelled and threw another lever that had klaxons screaming through the locomotive. Sending it’s crew to action stations. A grin turned up one side of Overtuns face. Ever since taking command of the Agamemnon it had been his pleasure in making it into one thing. A brawling machine. Let others have the long range ballets of trajectories and leading. He’s was to hit them as hard as possible and bleed them white.

For that purpose mounted to the Agamemnon where two yawing gun barrels. They packed large canister shot. Filled with hundreds of balls that would tear into any target. Another fast boots of the locomotive sending it up the engineer are of the marauder looming into the headlight of the Memnon. Overtun ripped the firing lever of the front guns. The firing could be felt even with the pounding of the locomotive engines. The marauder pitched up with the impact. It started to twist slowly around. It’s guns fired out into the wilderness in protest of its ill fortune.

Onto the bridge strode Bathcat. Already in the sky suit. Bedecked with knives and pistols. In one hand he held a Boarding axe. The other a sawed off shotgun. And a grin.

“Well if you must go take your whole section.”

“Sure I can. It will save everyone else some nightmares.”

“No. As we are in a hurry Ellis. Take them all. I will join you after I get them lashed down.”

The locomotive is swinging around me My breath is tearing ragged out of my lungs. I climb to my feet as the locomotive shakes from another firing of the cannons. The suddenness of the evasive maneuvers. Slamming me into the blukheads. Then with a swift silence that again defied his size Bathcat grabbed me by the collar lifting me from my feet.

“Come on boy. Time for a lesson.”

I had no idea that I could be pulled into a sky suit as fast as I was. Can’t make them wait Bathcat said to me. There was no firing for some reason. No hard maneuvers. Suited and with a large bore revolver in my hand I was back in the hatchet with the howling high wilderness infront of me. The marauder locomotive drifting. A man next to us aims a large swivel gun. With a deep boom it launches a large spike towards the marauder. I managed to in bed itself in the drifting marauder. From different points of the ‘Memnon’s hull other long lines fired out towards the marauder. Landing and then the slack starting to take up a little at a time.

“Bathcat please” I can’t stop myself from saying as my stomach churns. I’m lashed to the psycho.

“Don’t beg boy. It might confuse my aim when we get over there.” He latches is only the tideWith one steady push he launches us as the hatch. I scream.

The wind buffets us pushing us left and right but Overtun has closed this distance and in no time we crashed in easily through one of the yawing holes left by the Memnon’s guns. I land flat on the hard deck the impact knocking th wind from my lungs. Some how Bathcat lands on his feet, Straddling me. The compartment that had been hit by the Memnon’s guns was a thing of nightmare bloody gore decorated the walls and dripped from the overhead the coppery smell of the blood mixing with the air. Bathcat scanned the room. Stepping from over me. His eyes on the door out of the locomotive. I fight to control the shakes that are coursing through my body. The shock of being flung through the high wilderness. Now surround by this carnage. Damn that psychopath Bathcat.

“I will kill you for that” the words come out of my mouth before I knew I was even talking.

He doesn’t turn. “I’d die happy knowing that you had that in you.”

He starts walking to the hatchway out as I struggle to my knees. I point the large revolver that they shoved in my sky suit at the back of his head. It’s amazing how smooth the trigger pull was. clack that’s not right. clack no! clack

“Well I am surprised. Must have really pushed you over your limit.” Bathcat said, he didn’t really turn just reached his hand inside a pocket of his sky suit. When it came out he turned it over slowly. The bullets thunded onto the deck one after another. “Welcome to your new limits. Now come on.”