Brass Skies Vol. 1: The Battle of Chesapeake

To Steal a Ship (part 1)

"I am going to steal a ship." These were the first words Robert made upon waking up in the dilapidated boarding house room that served as his home.

"Hmmm?" a tired voice to his right coincided with a rustling in the bed.

Robert blinked and squinted from the muted sunlight that poured in between the slats nailed across the windows of his humble room and landed across his bed. He turned his head first to the left to see the half finished bottle of rum sitting on the table then to the right where the dark haired girl who lay snuggled up against him tried to shake herself awake.

Woman, he mentally corrected himself as he brushed hair the color of dark chestnuts away from her face. No one that has been through what she has and can do the things she does can be considered a girl. He gazed into the dark eyes that snapped open, searching his eyes, feeling himself drawn into them.

"So was I better than my sister this time?" she asked wryly.

Seeing the trap for what it was, Robert ignored the question. He met her gaze directly and firmly pronounced "I am going to steal a ship."

"You said that already," she pointed out helpfully. "So which one of your smuggling competitors are you going to rob this time? Tyler? Gunner? Wilson? Or are you going to try to scam one of the merchant firms into giving you one of those wrecks floating in the harbor?"

Robert shook his head. "No, not that kind of ship. One from your father's yards."

She smacked him with a pillow as she laughed at his joke, "You're crazy."

Her laughter died off as continued to watch her. Her brown eyes searched his, growing wide. "Wait, you're serious."

It wasn't a question but he nodded anyways.

"You're crazy," she repeated, this time seriously. "Robert, it would never work. Those are navy ships. You would never even get close. If the navy guards didn't kill you, my father's would."

"Actually, it could work but I would need your help, Jessie," he insisted using his pet name for her. "Yours and Clara's. With you both helping, we could do it."

Jessie, whose real name was Jezebel, remained unconvinced. "And just who would you crew it? Airships aren't like one of your little cutters that can be manned with three people and if you haven't noticed none of the three of us has any experience crewing an airship."

"Actually, I have some experience." Robert reassured her, "And I have an experienced crew. Fifty men and we can get more later on if we need."

He waited, watching as she slipped from the bed, wrapping the sheet around her into a make-shift robe which she held in place with one arm clenched across her chest while bending down to grab her discarded clothing off the floor. When she cleared her throat, he rolled over to face the table.

He never understood Jezebel's modesty and shyness while dressing when she certainly had no such inhibitions undressing. But then Clarabelle is the same way, he reminded himself with a wry twist of the corner of his mouth. As Jezebel dressed, he reflected on how much a twisted sense of irony played in his relationship with the two sisters.

He had originally sought them out, intending on trying to seduce them both and ruin their reputations as a way to get revenge against their father, Sir Andrew Black, master of the shipyards. Black had ruined several of Robert's attempts to "go straight" simply out of some sort of perverse amusement and a general disdain of "inferior" social classes and ancestry. Robert expected that his daughters Jezebel and Clarabelle to have his same sense of snobbery and superiority.