“Okay, ahead slow!” Twila cranked on the dial and peered into the faint purple light.
The Hourglass had been waiting near the entrance to the cave the Endeavor was stuck in. Rosie had gotten as close as she felt comfortable. Still, Twila wanted her airship touching the Endeavor’s wreck if she could make it happen. So the Hourglass crept into the cave as Carter and Jamis guided it with myst lanterns on long poles.
“Full stop!”
The Hourglass drifted slowly toward the Endeavor’s deck. Twila tapped the altimeter to drop it just a few feet before leveling it off. The sloop bumped lightly into the larger airship and settled a few feet away. Twila locked the controls to idle.
Rosie tossed a rope across the gap between the two ships. Becca tied it off on Endeavor’s rails. A pair of gangplanks made a suitable bridge between the two airships, and Twila walked across onto the Endeavor. She’d made it clear that she didn’t want to stay too long, and the crew was hard at work already.
“Carter, Becca, Jamis, and Rojir, to the deck,” She called into the ship’s cavernous hold. Rosie and Charlie were already on the Hourglass’s deck with their two prisoners. The two ship rats from the Endeavor. Uh…
“Who were you again, ship rats?” Twila asked, staring at them.
“That’s Ellie, and I’m Sam,” the boy said. “We offered to join your crew, and you threw us in your closet.”
“We still want to join, though,” Ellie said.
“Charlie, does the Hourglass need more crew?” Twila asked as the two ship rats descended into arguing.
“We have everyone we need, skipper,” Charlie said, “but more hands would let us run a night shift or hold our own better in a fight. I say we test ‘em. Sam, you’re with Rojir and Carter. Anything myst-powered and interesting, you tell them what it is. Ellie, you’re with Jamis and Becca. You’re looking for ship armor that can be transferred over and for anything useful in the hold.”
Twila nodded. Auntie Charlie was still giving orders, just like before the mystmaze, but she could see the wisdom in her orders. “Charlie, Marianna, you two are in the skipper’s cabin. Bring anything you think is worth taking over. We’ll split it up later. I’ll be in Hourglass’s engine room. Rosie’s staying over here too. I’ll need some help.”
As the Hourglass’s crew left to start looting what they could. Twila spread her tools out on the deck. “You take Rightie. He’s been less grumpy lately. General check-up–tighten everything, check the belts, and don’t get your hand ripped off.”
“Okay, Twila,” Rosie said. She grabbed a ratchet wrench and started getting to work. Twila watched for a minute to make sure the younger girl was doing it right. Then she started her own maintenance check on Leftie.
As she tightened the bolts, Rosie coughed. “What’s wrong, Twila? I thought you’d be excited about what they’ll find for the Hourglass.”
“I am.” Twila dripped oil between a set of gears and rubbed it into the gaps, careful not to get her cloth caught between the teeth as they slowly meshed and unmeshed. After a few rotations, the gears stopped clicking and meshed quietly, and Twila grinned. “It’s just…Vayne’s out there. He knows where this treasure is. If we come back for it, we’ll have to fight him again, and I don’t know if I can.”
Rosie nodded seriously. She fiddled with her wrench and then set it aside. A few of the engine’s belts weren’t spinning; she started pulling on them. “These are tight, Twi. You’re thinking about it like a skipper or a fighter. What if you thought about it like a mystgineer?”
“What do you mean?” Twila asked. She stopped working on the gears to stare at the back of her friend’s head.
“What would you do if we switched out the Hourglass’s engines for the ones on the Endeavor? Aren’t they different enough that you couldn’t work on them easily?”
“All airship engines work the same, Rosie,” Twila sighed. “We’ve talked through it before.”
“Sure, they all superheat myst, use it to run turbines, and the turbines push the ship forward or something. But Twi,” Rosie stopped working on the belts and turned, hands on her hips. “The Hourglass uses those big cargo hauler engines, right? They’re not built like sprinter engines are, or a little one for a ship’s boat. They have quirks, and you need the skills and practice to fix them.”
“So?”
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“So, how did you learn about Leftie and Rightie?”
“Jeremy taught me…oh.” Twila went quiet for a moment. Then she started popping Leftie’s casing off and checking for nearly-breached pipes. It all made sense. She had all the components to beat Vayne, either as a skipper or as a fighter. The sword, the guns, and the gizmos. She didn’t know how to assemble them into a working machine.
She tinkered with Leftie for a while. Even after Rosie said she was done with Rightie, Twila worked on the finicky engine. She tightened bolts a quarter turn, loosened valves to let myst trickle through, sealed them shut, and replaced bits of worn tubing. When she’d finished, she polished the casing so it glowed and popped it back into its grooves. Then she carefully cleaned the tools she’d used and put them back into the tool closet. Only then did she nod to Rosie. “Thanks.”
Twila tried to imagine the machine she’d have to build as the two girls climbed back onto the ship's deck. It was no use. Whenever something started coming together, she remembered another piece to add and had to start over. In the cave’s musty air, and with the crew’s voices in her head, she pushed the whole thing out of her mind.
Around her, on the deck, were the Endeavor’s spoils. The sky chest filled with coins and treasures from the [Sky Captain’s] cabin drew most of the crew’s eyes. But a few scraps of inch-thick brass plating lay in a pile next to Becca. “Jamis is working on peeling more off the hull, but we thought you’d want to see a sample,” Becca said, pointing at it.
“There weren’t many contraptions on board, skipper,” Rojir said, “and Carter seemed really insistent on taking the crane. With a little work, you could install it on the deck between the bow [Long Five] and the hold stairs. It’d take the whole crew to move it, though.”
Twila stared at Carter for a moment. Of course he wouldn’t have given up on the crane. “Okay. Get it on board. We can have Will move it after that.”
“Before we dig into all that, skipper, we need to discuss pay,” Auntie Charlie interrupted. “Typically, on a non-pirate vessel, the skipper gets fifty or a dozen shares for each share a ship rat gets. You could do that, but the crew wouldn’t be thrilled.”
Grumbled agreements from most of the crew confirmed that statement for Twila.
“On the other side of things–and I know you don’t think you’re a pirate–a good pirate skipper only takes three to five shares for each a ship rat gets. You’d be well within your rights to claim another four or five for the ship itself. Does that sound fairer to the crew?” A few crewmates nodded slowly.
“Okay, I’ll take three for myself, five to keep Hourglass happy, and we’ll do one for each crewmate. Two for Auntie Charlie because she’s quartermaster,” Twila said.
“And what about back pay?” Rosie asked.
“Yeah, Vayne owed us pay from that haul,” Sam blurted. “That’s our money, right there. Ellie and I deserve a share each too.”
Twila sighed and rubbed her temples. Figuring out pay for the crew was going to be more trouble than she’d ever thought.
[Twila Tighe, Ship Rat Mystgineer, Equipment Level 1.33 (Myst 1/15, Hit Points 1/1)]
[Head - Empty]
[Eyes - Myst Lens (lvl. 1) Myst Sight (passive) See own status block and others’ classes]
[Chest - Ship Rat’s Harness (lvl. 0)]
[Waist - Apprentice Mystgineer’s Bandolier (lvl. 1) Deep Pockets (passive) - Equip an additional Gizmo]
[Legs - Canvas Overalls (lvl. 0)]
[Gizmo #1 - Loaded Dice (lv. 2) - Roll the Bones (active, 1 myst/roll) - gain a random myst enhancement; Skill - Trickery]
[Gizmo #2 - Anton’s Pocket Watch (lvl. 4)] Redo (active, 5 myst/5 seconds) - redo the last five seconds of time, with knowledge of what’s happening (1 minute to reset); Skill - Piloting]
[Gizmo #3 - [Pocket Condenser (lvl. 1) - Condense Myst (passive) - Condenses 1 myst/5 ticks; Skill - None]
[Gizmo (Belt) - Mystwork Lantern (lvl. 2): Mystlight (active, 25% failure chance, 1 myst/attempt) - start the light; Adjustable Light Aura (sustained, .5-2 myst/tick) - light a variable area; Skill - Perception]
[Myst Battery - Myst Battery Mk. 2 (lvl. 1) Myst Storage (passive) - 15 myst maximum, requires condenser to refill]
[Weapon/Pair - Anton’s Paired Pistols (lvl. 2) Smoothbore Myst-Shot (active, 1 cartridge/shot) - fire a ray of heated myst; Rapid Shots (active, 2 myst/shot) - fire twice/tick; Skill - Marksman]
[Weapon #2 - Heatblade (lvl. 2) Heat (active, 1 myst/tick) - cause the blade’s edge to superheat; Skill - Acrobatics]
[Weapon/Pair - Empty]
[Skill #1 - Trickery 2]
[Skill #2 - Perception 2]
[Skill #3 - Piloting 4]
[Skill #4 - Marksman 2]
[Skill #5 - Acrobatics 2]