Rosie
The man glared at Auntie Charlie as she stepped out of the light and into the dark, stuffy Blackstone Inn. Her pistol stayed trained on him. “Now, what’s the disagreement here all about?”
“They’re messing with the Company, and they’re talking about fires–and I thought I heard them say something about those two on the posters. That’s our jobs they’re talking about burning down,” the man growled. He glanced at Charlie’s chain cutlass and compared it to his sword, which had no moving parts. Then he stared at Charlie, eyes widening. Rosie saw him grip his hilt tightly. “You! You’re DeWalt!”
“How do you know that?” For a moment, confusion flashed across Charlie’s face. Then her sword was up in the first guard.
“There are posters all over town about you and that girl you run with,” the man said. He raised his own sword and crossed it over Charlie’s. “Everyone, she’s worth two hundred crowns, and she probably knows where the other two hundred is hiding! Get her!”
Rosie’s stomach plummeted. Suddenly, everyone in the tavern seemed to have a dagger, a bottle, or just a chair in their hands. “Can’t we find some other way?” She started to ask, but it was too late.
The man’s sword flashed forward. Charlie caught it with her own, binding blades with him. Her pistol went off with a tick and a flash. Then, she reversed its grip and clubbed the man in the temple.
Just as the fight truly looked to start, though, someone kicked the bar’s door in. Blinking in the light, Rosie watched in horror. Marine after Marine started piling in through the narrow passage, bayonets fixed to their muskets.
“Run, ship rats! Into the tube! Shoot out the lights!” Charlie yelled. Rosie’s chest tightened, but part of her was thrilled Charlie was here. At least she wouldn’t have to be in charge.
“Throw down your arms and give up!” A Marine shouted. Others started lining up in two ranks on the narrow tavern’s far side.
“Shoot the lights!” Charlie yelled again. Rosie pulled her pistol as they backed down the hall. She fired it into the nearest purplish mystlamp. It exploded, filling the suddenly-dark section of the room with a violet haze.
Other ship rats were doing similar, and Rojir and Charlie pulled tables down. “Get down,” she screamed. Rosie threw herself onto the ground behind a table and reloaded her pistol.
“Level! Fire!” The Marine who’d spoken first shouted. The staccato ticking sound from the soldiers’ muskets filled the air. Holes punched through the table around her, and the acrid myst smell assaulted her nose.
The barkeep started shouting, “Take it somewhere else! This isn’t my fight,” but a Marine shoved him to the ground and reloaded his musket.
“The back! Head to the back!” Charlie screamed. The ship rats swarmed back into the darkness, shooting lights. They could hear Marines pursuing them, and an occasional mystshot firing off. The purple flashes lit up their retreat. Then, their retreat stopped. They’d arrived at a door jammed into the back of the tunnel. A locked door.
Charlie threw her shoulder into it, wincing. Rosie started toward her, but she waved the girl off. “I’m fine. Jamis, get this open.” The woman started loading her pistol.
“Everyone else, keep the Marines off him.”
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Twila
First guard. Lunge. Clink.
Twila stopped. The coin spun on its string. She’d done it, but could she do it again?
First guard. Lunge. Clink.
She repeated it over and over until she could hit four out of five lunges. Then she stopped, feeling a smile spreading across her face. It had taken far too long, but now she understood. Just like the big engine the skywright was supervising as a crane slowly lifted it into the air, the fencing exercise was just mechanics. She’d learned the distance, and the force she could put into a thrust. Then it was just trying different timings, closing in on that perfect one.
As she squeezed past ship rats and opened the door to her cabin, Twila started thinking about her bigger problem. The treasure–how was she going to get it? She tucked the practice sword away and, after some hesitation, pulled on her [Heat Blade] and [Anton’s Paired Pistols]. Going without on her ship was one thing, but she’d feel too naked without them in Seapike itself. And she needed to run a few errands. Finding Charlie to tell her the good news, that she understood time and distance. But more importantly, she had to spend some crowns. The ship still needed [Puckle Guns], whatever those were.
Armed and ready to shop, Twila headed back out into the city. There’d be a weapons shop nearby, she was sure of it. People bustled back and forth across the street, ducking into alleys carved into the black rock, and a fishy smell competed with the skywrights’ myst-and-sawdust odor still stuck in Twila’s nose.
And there it was. ‘Henry and Henry: Secondhand Airship Armaments,’ she puzzled out from the sign–the crossed cannons told her more than the words did. And the shining brass guns in the door.
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A man greeted her, looking toward the door and down when she wasn’t at his eye height. “Ship rats again? Does no skipper have the time of day to shop for themselves?”
“Actually, I’m skipper of the Hourglass,” Twila said. “[Puckle Guns]. We’re looking for two or more. Do you have them, and can you show me how they work?”
“First, do you have the coin? Henry and Henry only shows merchandise to people who can pay for it, and Puckles cost a pretty sum. Seventy-five crowns per gun.”
“Yes,” Twila said. She held up her sack of coins. “I’ll take two and a lesson on using them.”
The man nodded, adjusting his stupid-looking top hat, and led Twila into the back room. “Henry, I’m with a customer. She claims to be the skipper of some airship and wants to purchase two Puckles. Watch the front.”
“Alright, Henry,” an identical voice called.
Twila followed the man back into the shop’s storeroom. There, on tripods, sat a half dozen shining brass guns. One was just seven long barrels; when Twila looked at it questioningly, the first Henry shook his head. “That’s a Chambers. You don’t want that unless you’re attacking a ship. If you pull the trigger, it starts firing mystshots, one every second or so. And it will. Not. Stop. It has a two-minute burn time, one-hundred-twenty shots. It’s a mess, and we can’t just scrap it either.”
He pointed to the other five guns. “No, you want a couple of these. This is a Puckle Smoothbore Repeating Myst-Musket, made by Gibson Company, of course.”
Twila looked. A single brass barrel sat on a tripod, slightly back-heavy from the seven-tubed cylinder. Henry cranked a handle, and the seven cylinders separated from the barrel, revealing tubes. “The cartridges go inside. You light them off with the mystlock device over the top. It fires, then you crank the cylinder out, rotate the barrel by hand, and crank it back in. Light, crank, rotate, crank, repeat. Every seven shots, you reload.”
There were two bigger Puckles in the back, with more tubes in each cylinder. She pointed. “Those have nine shots. Why aren’t you showing me those?”
“Ah, because if your airship was a pirate hunter or a privateer, your skipper wouldn’t have sent a ship rat over here. Therefore, most of your crew are ship rats. You need the lighter guns to compensate for that. Now, look here–there’s some really clever engineering Puckle designed into this gun. The ratchet on the cylinder keeps the tube in line with the barrel, and the mystlock opens up mystholes and then closes them again when the cylinder spins.”
On and on Henry went, talking about the gun. Eventually, as he started to describe how clever the tripod was, Twila interrupted him. “Hourglass will be done with her refit soon. If I pay you a couple more crowns, will you help me move these over to her? She’s at Wainson’s Skywrights.”
Henry looked a little put out, but he nodded. “We’ll throw in fifty cartridges for each gun for another ten crowns. That’ll be more than enough for airship defense.”
“Make it one hundred. We’ll find somewhere to store them on board.”
“Very well. Your total is seventy-five per gun, twenty for cartridges, and five for delivery. One hundred ninety-five crowns.”
Her mind wandered as Twila counted out the crowns ten at a time. Was Rosie having a good time on her shore leave? And where was Auntie Charlie? She had so much to show her!
[Twila Tighe, Ship Rat Mystgineer, Equipment Level 1.33 (Myst 1/12, 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 - Empty]
[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 - Condensing Battery Mk. 2 (lvl. 1) Myst Storage (passive) - 12 myst maximum, requires condenser to refill; Condense Myst (passive) - Condenses 1 myst/6 ticks]
[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]