Bonus! short story : Spitfire

It was more than gears and levers. She took a step back as her smile grew larger. She looked at the culmination of months of work and knowledge she’d gained from years, and it looked amazing. It would be a bit large for her size, but manageable, it was simple enough to teach to others, she even kept all her drawing and schematics so that she could make more. She stepped closer and picked it up, heavy like she thought, but manageable. She was about to leave when she remembered where she was and quickly set the large arm cannon of an invention back on its stand. A hasty few minutes later and all the tools where put away, the workbench was wiped off, and she was cleaning the last of the grease of her hands. She ran to a nearby mirror to make sure her short hat was aligned, with the large bow just right of the center symmetry of her face.

She ran to the invention and picked it up by the handle, she tried carrying it by that, but her pace was slowed having to swing the heavy weight with her steps. She switched the handle to her left hand and grabbed the crank on the device’s side with her right. She paused for a moment; she should have made a strap. She looked back down the hall at the door leading to the cargo hold; no she wanted to show it off now, the strap could wait. As she lugged it down the hall a crew member named Gibbons turned sideways to get by her, much of the hall taken up by the awkward way she held the device.

“Oh apologies ma’am.” The eager girl turned to look at what Gibbons meant, worried he had knocked a piece off her beautiful creation, but from the awkward way he raised his foot and the scuff mark on the back of her dress, he had accidently stepped on the excess length of her deep red garb that trailed behind her when she didn’t wear its frame, the heavy nuisance.

“It’s quiet alright, is Dad up top?”

“Ai, manning the Helm, ma’am.”

“Thank you Gibbons.” The lady continued her awkward steps up 3 levels, finally appearing on deck of the airship. She took a moment for her sight to adjust; the sun was high and peering between the two large balloons holding the dirigible in the freedom of the open skies.

She scanned the deck for a moment, looking just above the head line of most the crew for her father, but just as Gibbons had said, she found him standing like a statue, both hands gripped to the wheel that kept the Hawk in the wind. She lugged the device closer to the helm raised above the deck, and called to her father.

“Dad! Its finished!” She raised the device high above her head for him to see, shaking a bit to keep its heavy weight balanced.

“What would be finished Nessy?”

“My invention!” Nessy took a slightly pouty tone to her father looking into the wind while she tried to show off what was currently, her greatest creation.

“And what’s this one called Nessy?”

“The SPITFIRE!” Nessy added a flare of dramatics to the announcement of her invention’s title, the only reply she got was a chuckle from a crew member near her father. The towering figure of Benjamin Hawkins subtly raised an eyebrow to the crew member, who upon noticing cleared his throat and turned away to find whatever task he could, unable to remove his grin.

“Well, sounds a tad bit dangerous, I’d better inspect it.” Hawkins taped the ships navigator, Sterling, to take the helm, and made his way down the stairs to his eagerly waiting daughter, he had been inspecting her “inventions” since she was old enough to pronounce the word, and Hawkins had suspected after, that many of the stuck together toys she would carry over to him before she could speak were meant to be inventions as well. He handled the invention with easy as he took from Nessy’s proclaiming arms and inspected it, having not a clue what it was or supposed to do.

“So the Spitfire huh?” Hawkins held the obvious grip of the device and let it hang to the side of him, where as it nearly reached the ground in Nessy’s arms it had a clear foot and half of clearance in her father’s arms. Next to him, Nessy looked like a small child even though she was a fully grown young woman. Stout was a word used to describe people who were almost as large as Benjamin Hawkins. He was clearly taller than any other man on his crew, and could clearly best any of them, or all of them, physically. He had a beard just long enough to show he was older then you, with a slight amount of grey on his sideburns and in the hair line that arced around his ears to say he was smarter then you as well. He used to say he designed this ship in his mind and built it with his hands, leading many of its crew to envision him actually ripping out a tree from its root with his bare hands and slicing the wood into planks in the same manner. He was simply that kind of man.

“Want me to tell you what it does?” Nessy lit up, her father’s opinion meaning more to her then her own thoughts.

“Always Nestasha, always.” Especially after that time when she was 14 and nearly blew off one of the balloons while they were over the ocean. Hawkins gave the device back to his daughter, and she followed him as he inspected the various operations happening on the deck.

“Ok well you remember when we got attacked by pirates over the coast a while back and we had all that wreckage on the decks and I thought we should save the wood and you said to sweep it off the decks even though I thought we could use it and you said it wasn’t good for more than kindle wood?”

“….yes?” Hawkins remembered being a bit more concerned with making sure his ship didn’t fall apart.

“Ok well I thought about that and I realized, that would be an amazing weapon! Using wreckage from our own ship that’s just going to be wasted and using it to attack another ship-“

“Nestasha Hawkins if you are lighting fires on board my ship again…” Hawkins held the bridge between his eyes as he squinted remembering the terror he had felt for months every time she got a near a match.

“Daaaaaaaaadd!” Nessy’s whining being another reason she looked like a child in front of her father. “It’s not even on yet, and look I used those chemicals you got me, they don’t light unless their mixed together its fine!” She still held the gun with both hands yet maneuvered it to show the vials sticking out from the back; she raised her eyebrows at her father to emphasis how obvious their safety was.

“You and your alchemy.” Hawkins sighed and kept walking below deck.

“It’s not alchemy its chemistry.” Her and her chemistry then. “Right so, after you use this muncher here the material gets formed into this ball, and the best part is only most of it has to be flammable I figure shards of glass and stuff could really hurt if they were mixed in then-“

The cry of “Captain” could barely be made out from below deck, but the tone spoke to its urgency. Her father’s head turned like an eagle just spotting its prey. He looked upward and over as though he could see through the wood of the ship and look directly at where it had come from. He managed to push past Nessy gently as he made violent haste for the deck. Nessy followed as quickly as she could while lugging the spitfire with her. She heard her father’s voice while her eyes still adjusted once again on deck.

“Why didn’t you see them sooner!?”

“I’m sorry Captian! They were waiting in the trees below they just inflated balloons and came about now?”

“So quickly?” Her father’s voice replaced its anger with bewilderment

“They must be using a heated hydrogen system, I’ve heard about those, there dangerous but quick for something like pouncing on-“

“Nessy get below!” her father cut her off.

“But-“ Nessy turned to see the pirate ship’s balloons coming up off the port side, they were already close enough for her to see the men clearly.

“Nestasha NOW!” Nessy’s legs were moving her below deck before she even realized she was complying with her father’s orders. She leaned to the side of the staircase to clear the way for a few of the crew to get by, swords in hand, one loading a musket. She stayed at the stairway for a few minutes, then she heard the cannons fire and the impact against the Hawk. She could hear where each impact hit, only really worried about the ones on the upper deck that could hit the crew. All would be well if they didn’t get close enough to board.

“Take the ship!!!!!!” That voice was clearly not one of the crew’s or her fathers, she heard swords clash and short range muskets fire not twenty feet away, then another cannon blast and the stair case filled with debris and dust in an instant. Nessy coughed as she picked herself up, she still held the spitfire in hand, and as the dust cleared she saw the debris littering the staircase. It looked just like the piles that had littered the deck months before. Nessy’s willpower overcame all other notions.

This was it, she thought, this is the day I prove myself as an inventor, right now is when I prove what I can do, to my dad and to myself. Nessy knew her father supported her, but she always held a lingering thought that maybe he doubted the usefulness of what she could do, but not after today.

Nessy began turning the crank on the right of the spitfire, she munched up all the debris it could hold and compact into the spherical container, it was harder then she’d thought, but the leverage of the large gears made it work. The next part she was really proud of, she held the gun straight, the munching crank had loaded the spring she now released. The munching apparatus was one piece that connected to the spherical chamber, the rest of the gun forked around that piece. The core of the spitfire snapped upward then clamped back down, the added weight from the debris causing Nessy to almost drop it. She inspected that everything was locked in place, the munching mechanism now pointed back and the spherical chamber was at the end of the gun. The gears on the crank had re-aligned now, and she turned it half way, the motion causing the back cover of the gun that had the chemical vials on it to move forward, beneath that cover, the vials connected to disperse small amounts of the liquids into the debris chamber, all taking only a second.

As Nessy emerged from below the deck, the spitfire was already glowing as pressure built. She looked around at the scene, the men fought, better trained then pirates but with less experience then a marauding scoundrel at fighting. The navigator, knowing in humility that he was little good in a fight, had stayed at the helm, trying to maneuver the Hawk away from the pirates, but the pirate airship was about to come around, and already another line of them was getting ready to board. She took aim, the spitfire would release automatically if the pressure grew critical, but she wanted to do this herself. The ship grew closer, then gun got hotter, she needed to time this right, not too close not too far. She released a breath, and then the trigger.

The recoil nearly knocked her over, and pushed a high pitched eep out of her. It appeared more as a orange hot shotgun blast from the mouth of hell then a fireball, but the larger pieces, now covered it burning chemicals and on fire themselves, moved forward. The sound of the release got the attention of everyone, but it was what came next that astonished them. A few of the large pieces pierced the starboard balloon of the pirate airship, and the dangers of using a hydrogen balloon were never clearer.

In an instant, what seemed like the birth of a phoenix replaced Nessy’s target. Its flames burned brighter then she had ever seen, and the heat alone she thought might scorch her hair. Instead of soaring like a firebird, flames dropped like dead weight. The pirate airship instantly tilted now that it had only its port balloon, pirates who did not hold tight fell from it to the trees below, though a tight grip did not supply mercy, as the ship followed downward, only slowed by one balloon. Nessy went to the edge of the ship and leaned over to watch the fireball explode again as the ship crashed. Every person on board, crew and pirate, looked up Nessy in time to see her straightening her hat, which she would now call her lucky hat, and strike a smiling pose, leaning part of her weight on the Spitfire as if it were a closed parasail. The pirates all dropped their swords, then Nessy dropped the gun, not realizing how hot it had gotten.