Since I finally got inspired to write again, and actually have a plot idea for this one, I began to write a story today. Here it is;

At precisely six-thirty-three in the morning of the twenty-third of October, her Greatness’s airship Circinus was attacked.

The morning on that day was a grey, misty one, with crisp dampness to its taste. The Circinus seemed to be flying through a singular, massive cloud, so thick was the fog; sightlines for those aboard were very short. The sun had risen around an hour previously, but its current position in the sky was unable to be discerned now, due to the solid grayness that cloaked the dome of the heavens.

Nonetheless, Captain Ajax Calloway knew the precise time onboard his vessel – a brass pocket watch, with fine, delicate gears, assured that. The watch had been a gift from a dying man, and Calloway therefore wore it with pride, as general proudly wore his medals. According to the expertly crafted timepiece, clasped in one of his gloved hands, it was currently six-thirty-one.

Calloway was nimbly built and in his mid-forties, with a face that was chiseled into hard lines by years of working against the elements, as was to be expected of an aviator. The man had been aboard the Circinus ever since the age of eighteen, when his father had volunteered him for the service. The airship was more his home than any place on land, and most of his life had been spent airborne, here.

He stood now atop the foredeck of his home, with long duster coat billowing with the wind. Calloway’s feet, clad in boots with spiked metal cleats on the soles, stood confidently on the wooden deck. Short-cropped iron hair rippled in the breeze, and his arms lay crossed over his chest.

Calloway’s dark, beady eyes roved restlessly over the Circinus; he watched as crewmates in leather overalls, heavy woolen shirts, and goggles went about their duties, from clambering up the rigging to the crow’s nest atop the airship’s blimp, to checking the pressure levels on the steam-driven propeller engines.

The Circinus was a small warship, whose usual duty was patrolling the borders of various territories under the dominion of the Great Protectorate. But this voyage was of a different purpose.

Because the Protectorate’s larger warships were away at war to the west and south, the Circinus was one of the only combat ships that could be spared from duty to carry out a special mission of importance; so important in fact, that Calloway had been given it directly by the Great Protector herself. They were to fly into hostile territory under flag of truce to attempt establishing diplomacy with enemy generals.

On this day, the Circinus was about two weeks out of port, and roughly half-done with her voyage. The sea was far below, and the nearest land was at least a hundred miles away.

The skies were featureless – nothing but thick, impenetrable grey, lit by a latent sun. Calloway felt uneasy to be so blind; a paranoia that had been cultivated in him through his long years of combat service. If one cannot see the surroundings, the captain thought to himself grimly, then one cannot see an enemy.

“Sir,” A voice broke the captain’s thoughts, “Sir, Mr. Vole says he saw something from the crow’s nest. North-Northwest.”

It was midshipman Mark Davies, a young man of thirteen who in Calloway’s view displayed great promise for advancement in the world of aeronautics. Davies was a thin, sprightly youth, with eyes like an eagle’s, and the agility of a spider on the ship’s perilous rigging. His work ethic and constant verve set him apart from the other midshipmen of the Circinus, as well as his natural ingenuity and understanding of airships.

“Did he describe this ‘something,’ Mr. Davies?” Calloway asked as he put away his pocket watch, exchanging it for a spyglass to try and discern any movement in that direction. He saw nothing through in the grayness.

“Yessir,” Davies responded, “He said it was large, and that was the only reason he saw it… it blocked out the sun for a moment, captain, and obviously the lack of sunlight for even a flash was suspicious. Mr. Vole thinks it was another airship, sir. On estimate, he guessed that it was a frigate.”

“A Frigate?” Calloway scowled. “Even if Vole is incorrect, we can’t take the risk of doing nothing – even a frigate on the smaller side outguns us massively. Tell the blimp crew that we need to descend, and quickly.”

But before Davies could convey his captain’s orders, there was a flash of amber in the clouds. The gray fog illuminated for the briefest of instants with bright firelight, accompanied by a deafening roar.

The flashes and the roars were those of cannons, fired in a devastating broadside. And now it was the Circinus’s turn to suffer.

Nearly four-dozen heavy iron cannonballs rocketed through the morning sky, propelled at huge speed and power like metal demons with will only to destroy. And that they did; the enemy’s broadside raked the Circinus from a three-fourths angle, causing damage to the lower hull, the deck, and the engine pods.

Wood shattered, brass bent, broken steam-tanks hissed, the whirring of engine gears halted abruptly. Splinters showered through the air, impaling unfortunate men with the merciless nature of chance. Sections of the rigging were shot at their bases, and the tightly-strung ropes twanged like guitar strings as they snapped free. The captain’s cabin, with its finely crafted windows, was peppered by some of the broadside fire as well, and shattering glass joined the cacophonous symphony of destruction.

Calloway, who had been knocked from his feet by the impact of the broadside blast, came to stand with agility surprising for a man of his age. A glance around revealed the damage to his beloved ship; perhaps six men felled that he could see, their limp forms lying on deck and staining the wood bloody. One of the blimp support masts had been shot entirely through, disconnecting the rod from the deck in a jagged mess of wood. Some of the metal braces had been bent monstrously out of shape. He turned and saw that two of the six propeller engines had been disabled, as well, and all on the same side – if they tried to move now, the ship would only fly in circles.

But the Circinus’s twin blimps, surprisingly, had remained undamaged, and that could only mean one thing; whoever it was that had just fired upon them didn’t want to sink the ship. They were instead… after something aboard.

Calloway knew in an instant what it was they wanted.

If they obtain what it is they seek… then we are all doomed.

A surge of energy rooted from his desperation grew; with a defiant cry, the captain sprang into vivid motion. Leaping over the injured Mark Davies, who lay upon the deck clasping at a cut on his side, Calloway unsheathed his cutlass and shouted out orders to his crew.

“Gun crews, prepare to return fire! Faster, faster, get those cannon primed, NOW! You there, pick up that ###### rifle – that’s the wrong end! Faster, all of you! Mr. Harley, tell your crews to rappel down and repair enough of our damaged engines to regain stability. Garret, swivel us to follow the enemy with our broadside; they’re trying to close on our flank. Gunners prepared? Excellent… wait for my command.”

As he gave the instructions, Calloway’s dark gaze never stopped roving across the misty skies around him – the enemy ship, having come closer, was visible now and again as a shadow in the fog. The lookout had been correct – the opponent appeared to be at least twice the size of the Circinus, and judging from the initial broadside, outgunned them three to one. But Calloway, despite how he rationally knew that he and all the rest of his men would die, would not give up placidly. He was a fighting man, and that was the method in which he desired to fall.

Having only one side of working engines did give the Circinus one advantage – it caused the airship to be constantly rotating in place, faster and with less forward motion than it could’ve done relying on the rudder. As such, it was impossible for the enemy ship to outmaneuver her or to fire – if the frigate made to swing around the back of the Circinus, they would be faced with her broadsides, and in avoiding these, had no time to unleash their own cannon volleys.

Calloway waited for the opportune moment, when his ship’s gunnery was facing perfectly, and when the silhouette of the frigate was very clear. Then, describing a curt arc with his sword, Calloway bellowed, the order to fire at his crew. They obliged, and with a chorus of bangs and a fireworks display of orange light, the Circinus unleashed its full fifteen-gun starboard arsenal.

The metal round-shots blasted through the grey misty skies with a vengeance, whistling in the air at their imposing target. They hit without the creaking, harsh sound of breaking wood, to Calloway’s disappointment; the frigate evidently was equipped with a heavy but effectively protective ironclad hull. The Captain cursed to himself; he should’ve aimed for the blimps, which were much more vulnerable and vital to the ship.

He didn’t have time to tell his soldiers to change the guns’ altitudes to hit their new targets, however, because the deck rocked once more from an enemy volley of cannon-fire. This time, the shots were fully directed at the Circinus’s fuel tanks.

There was a loud hiss of escaping air as the first tank was punctured – compressed steam, the ship’s power source, rushed out of the hole it had been provided. Another tank, that held water, took a number of shots, leaving ample exit routes for its contents. Liquid cascaded onto the deck below, making the wood slippery, and drenching the guns, rendering their paper-wrapped gunpowder cartridges useless. Calloway too was soaked by the downpour, but this did not stop him from continuing to shout orders to his crew.

“Equip yourselves!” the captain yelled as he sheathed his sword, and reached inside his heavy coat to draw one of two revolver pistols. Thankfully, the leather of his duster had protected the guns from the rain, and they were both fully functional.

He glanced back as the men obeyed him – Calloway picked out Mark Davies, despite his bleeding side, holding a bundle of rifles in his arms, and helping to distribute them among the men. The midshipman kept one for himself, and Calloway’s weathered face formed into a grim smile.

But his eyes did not stray too long on this sight. Making sure that he was unwatched, Calloway turned his back on the rest of the ship, dug into his pocket, and pulled out his pocket watch once again. Its round, brass frame glinted coldly in the gray light, and its needlelike hands ticked away, blissfully oblivious to the conflict raging around it.

They shall not take this, Calloway said to himself, I will not let them.

His focus, however, was pulled away as he detected the shape of the other ship drawing closer in the corner of his eye. The captain hurriedly glanced up to see it, and then moved his hand, as if to pocket the watch. He stopped, looked down at the thing, and scowled for a moment. A tear beaded in one eye.

Then, without further preamble, Calloway tossed the brass watch over the side of the ship. He did not watch it fall.

The cries of his men rang out as the oncoming frigate’s silhouette grew clearer and closer. The Circinus’s crew was not one of cowards – they shouted taunts and brandished their weapons at the enemy vessel as it came closer. Calloway returned to join their repelling line.

At long last, the opposing airship came close enough that some of its detail could finally be seen. Its hull was painted in all black, with similarly dark blimps. Vague shapes of harpoon launchers and rapid-fire guns, as well as men on its deck, could be discerned through the thick mist.

Calloway redrew his blade, and, with a shouted word, swung it down. The air next to him resounded with a dozen or more sharp loud cracks as his crew loosed a volley with their rifles, aiming at the profiles of the enemy’s men.

But, despite the accuracy of their weapons and most of the men being fair shots, there was not one cry of pain to be heard from the other deck. Rather, there were numerous ringing noises, like hammers hitting anvils, and a few thuds. Puzzlement overcame the men on the Circinus, and they muttered to one another in confusion, until the terrifying rattle of the adversary frigate’s rapid-fire guns broke the air.

The captain and his men ducked down, but not all quickly enough – one man caught five shots in his torso and neck within two seconds, causing a mist of red to explode outward from him. He gurgled and choked for an instant, then fell, his blood seeping onto the deck.

The crew rose sporadically to try and shoot back, and ducked as quickly as they might to dodge, but this was ineffective. Two more were taken down by the foe’s guns, and what return fire the Circinus managed mostly flew off-course.

Retorting, the frigate loosed a number of grapnel harpoons, the barbed heads of which slammed and stuck into the Circinus’s deck. Calloway risked a look over the side of the rail to examine one. Damnation, he thought to himself, metal cords. They wouldn’t be able to sever the connection now, not with the mere cutlasses and axes that they had. All that he and his men could do now was await the enemy force, and hope that they’d be able to defeat them. It’s an impossible hope, maybe, he reflected, but it’s the only one we have.

About a minute passed. Then they arrived.

When Calloway heard the timbers of the rail above his head creaking, he immediately leapt up, whirled around, and slashed in the same circle with his sword at the oncoming enemy. The force of the blow, if nothing else, threw the man backwards, off the rail, and down into the water far below. The men next to Calloway were performing similar actions, trying to force back the attackers. Some succeeded, but others did not.

Calloway himself was attempting to defend two harpoon lines. He slashed and jabbed at the oncoming men, but they did not seem to be afraid of his sword, and approached unperturbed. The captain was somewhat baffled by this, but did not relent. He took now his revolver in hand, and directed it at the head of one of his foes. The gun fired and hit its target point-blank, but did not slow the man – rather, it ricocheted of his head with a clang.

It was not a man. It may have been dressed like a man, shaped like a man, but it was not a man. Calloway realized that it was a Clockwork.

They all were.

The automatic soldiers were the newest invention on the warfront, Calloway knew – their first usage by the Great Protectorate had been all over the newspapers about a month past, bearing headlines such as “New Weapon to Win the World!” and “Glory of Great Protectorate Newly Realized!” They were the ideal soldiers, and what they lost in cost-effectiveness, they more than made up for in symbolic value.

But Calloway knew that the Clockwork Men designs were jealously guarded, for fear of them being used by the Protectorate’s chief nemesis, the Iourian Empire. So how was it that there was now a full frigate of them attacking the Circinus?

The Clockwork had gotten closer. Calloway gave it a hefty shove, and it tumbled over the rail. His mind had no more time to contemplate upon the situation now, for more of the mechanical soldiers were approaching him. Gears whirred and springs twanged underneath armored plating as they loomed closer, rifles clutched in their metal fingers. Vapor poured out of their hissing steam-driven motors as they strode forward in identical time, the gas seeping out from underneath their army uniforms.

With courage he often forgot he possessed, the Circinus’s captain charged the nearest one, shoved his revolver beneath its chin, and fired. The Clockwork’s metal neck crumpled as its head was thrown backwards violently, but it continued forward nonetheless. Calloway kicked it down to the ground, and stomped on its chest with all his might. But the metal plating barely dented.

Calloway cursed, and spun around to grab the rifle barrel of one that was about to fire on him, but another Clockwork came from behind him, and grabbed his neck in its cold iron hands, the motors of its arms stronger than the muscles of any man. It picked him off the ground, and flung him to the ground. He tried to get up, but was stopped when the automatic man that held the rifle shot him in the abdomen.

He gasped in pain as the shot, fired from so close, speared directly through his body, cracking a vertebra as it did so. Calloway felt a warm stickiness soaking through his clothes and flooding down to the ground. His nerves wailed in agony with the wound, throbbing and reeling with electrical torture. Lightheadedness suddenly overcame him, and he nearly passed out.

Through the forms of the Clockworks surrounding his body on the ground, Calloway watched as the remainders of his men standing were slaughtered by the enemy machinations. Many put up valiant resistance, but in the end, their inferior numbers were not nearly enough to contest the grim power of the Clockworks.

Unexpectedly, all of the automatic men ringing him parted, forming into two lines on either side of him. This left clear the way for a man to step through to Calloway.

This one was certainly an actual man, unlike the machines around him, but there was something about his air that made him seem somehow larger. He was clad in a purely black leather jacket with silver clasps, the hem of which rose to just above the feet of the dark boots he wore. Black trousers covered his legs, revealed as the bottom of his coat opened in the wind. His hands were gloved, and on his head was a top-hat, making him look even taller than he already was.

But most distinctive to his appearance was a mask that covered his face. It was of beaten brown leather, reinforced with metal studs. The mask roughly conformed to the contours of a human face, with holes only at the eyes, though the shape of a mouth was pressed into the leather. It was a countenance that was fully neutral, devoid of emotion, which served only to make it more sinister.

This black-clad man approached Calloway’s form on the ground. Once he had reached the wounded captain, the Masked Man spoke, in a voice wholly not extraordinary, but with a tone that had an edge of steel.

“Where is it?” The Masked Man asked.

“I… no longer possess it,” Calloway replied, coughing up a bit of blood as he spoke. His voice had been reduced to a hoarse gasp.

“Where is it?” The Masked Man repeated, his tone unchanged, but his hand now fingering a four-barreled pistol at his belt.

“It… It is beyond your reach,” Calloway spat, “And that… is all that is important.”

Without warning, the Masked Man swooped down to Calloway, and, taking a knife, slashed through the clothes over the captain’s wounds.

“What… what are you…” Calloway asked, breath ragged.

But his words were cut off as a shrill scream rose in his throat, and erupted out of his mouth. The dark man had shoved his gloved index finger into Calloway’s bullet wound, and moved the digit in a slow circle. Calloway continued to scream. The Masked Man pulled his finger out, leaving the Circinus’s captain to groan and gulp for breath. He had gone very pale.

The Masked Man stood again, and repeated his question one more time, his voice now angry. “Where. Is. It?”

Calloway looked up at the face of his interrogator. His deep gaze smoldered, as if trying to burn into the mind of the Masked Man. The captain, with a massive effort, sat up, and, leaning back on his hands, spoke clearly and firmly.

“You will kill me before I tell you.”

The Masked Man drew his pistol and shot the captain four times in his head. Ajax Calloway died immediately.

With a snarl, the Masked Man whirled around, headed back towards his black frigate. By now, the ship had drawn close enough that a gangplank could be extended between it and the Circinus. It was this bridge that the Masked Man headed for.

On the way, however, he encountered a body sprawled across his path. It was the injured form of Mark Davies. The midshipman had passed out earlier in the fight from blood loss from the gash in his side. Thinking him dead, the Clockworks had left him alone. But the dark-clothed man knew different.

After a moment of consideration, the Masked Man picked the boy’s body up, and carrying it in his arms, crossed the gangplank back onto his airship.

. . .

-Nuju Metru