Young Explorer’s Adventure Guide Volume V

Dark Skies Over Deadwood-2

“Mom!”

Her mother straightened, turning her way. “You’re back early. Oh, Ling, nice to see you. Who else have you brought with you?”

“This is Kangi, Whirlwind Horse’s grandson. Kangi, this is my mom, Captain Osanna Marchetti.”

“Nice to meet you, ma’am.”

“Same here.” She smiled at Kangi. “Aurelia, you’re giving a tour, I suppose.”

“I am. Whirlwind Horse said we can’t steal his grandson away.” Aurelia reached over, thumping Kangi’s shoulder. “I might disagree.”

Her mother snorted. “Get to know the boy before you recruit him. For all you know he might be afraid of heights.” She nodded with her chin toward Kangi who stared over the edge of the railing, his skin several shades lighter now.

“We’re not even in the air yet.” Aurelia clamped a hand on his arm, pulling him away from the rail.

“This might be high enough,” he muttered. “Not sure man was meant to soar like a bird.”

“Wrong!” she replied cheerily.

Kangi relaxed some once she took him on the tour. Ling joined in, having been on board several times. Kangi’s eyes went back to normal human size once they were below deck. How disappointing, she thought. Truly, someone named Crow should soar. Neither Ling nor Kangi could be pried away from the engines. Aurelia liked them, too, but her strength lay more with navigation than tinkering with engines.

Kangi seemed unimpressed with her quarters and couldn’t be lured up into the rigging with Ling and her, not for anything. Finally, her mother shooed them off ship to go find trouble elsewhere. Kangi unhitched Wind but had his gaze on the Minerva.

“Part of me would like to take a ride, but the rest of me is sure it’ll be terrifying,” Kangi said then turned to her. “I’m amazed how you can climb like a squirrel with your prosthetic leg.”

“I do my best to not let it slow me down,” she replied, puffing up proudly.

“You’ve succeeded.” Kangi smiled. “So what should we do next? Your mother clearly has had enough of our company.”

“Mom is always too busy when we first land. We can come back another day if you want. At some point I have to go back to your grandfather’s store and buy Mom’s birthday gift.”

“We can go back now if you want. There’s not much to do here unless you’re a gambler.” Kangi sighed. “If we were home, I could take you to do so many things on the plains.”

Aurelia didn’t miss Ling’s c****d eyebrow and surmised there wasn’t much to do on the plains either. “That would have been fun,” she said diplomatically.

“We could play mahjong today or tomorrow. I’m teaching Kangi how to play.” Ling said brightly.

“He’s taught me too. It’s pretty fun. I could show you poker. Mom doesn’t know I know. I’ve watched the air men playing. We don’t have to gamble though.” She shrugged. “Or we can use penny candy.”

“We can get that at Grandfather’s store.”

“Sounds like we have our trouble to get into.” Aurelia grinned. Being around friends her age was going to be so much fun.

Aurelia sauntered down a back street with Kangi and Ling, having spent the last two days with them playing mahjong and poker and exploring the city. Ling led them into Mount Moriah Cemetery so they could visit Wild Bill Hickok’s grave. Another of Ling’s friends had gone with them then, enamored with the sharpshooter until he heard some of Aurelia’s stories about airship pirates. All three boys decided she was even more interesting than some old gambler. Aurelia floated as high as the Minerva on their admiration.

Glancing around at the alleyway, she asked, “Why are we coming here?”

“I have a letter to deliver for my uncle.” Ling waved the creamy envelope bearing Chinese characters. He had tried to show her a little bit of their calligraphy, but she had no aptitude for it.

A scream echoed in the tight alleyway, sending Aurelia’s heart into her throat. She’d heard men in pain before, and she knew she heard it now. A door burst open, and a man stumbled out, blood streaming from his neck. He fell in the street, and three other men raced out of the door. They jerked to a stop, seeing Aurelia and her friends.

“Run!” Kangi cried.

They wheeled around, fleeing toward the mouth of the back street. The main street had more people. They might not be entirely safe there but safer than down a blind alley. Aurelia heard the men thundering behind them as she struggled to keep up to the boys. Her prosthetic leg was great, but she had never run long distances on it. An airship wasn’t that big. The hard thumping sent blossoms of sparking pain racing up from her stump, and she could feel the leather straps straining as the limb threatened to twist off center.

Kangi and Ling dropped back enough so they could each grab a hand, pulling her along. Aurelia knew they meant well, but they could easily yank her faster than her prosthesis could keep up.

“Don’t shoot them!” one of the men cried out behind them. “Do you know how much someone would pay for kids like them in certain place? We’ll take them to Renteger.”

Aurelia didn’t want to know about those certain places, and she was losing the foot race.

“In here.” Ling kicked a door open, its lock barely putting up a fight. “It’s the Green Door. Places to hide.”

The Green Door was an infamous brothel. Aurelia knew it had not only places to hide but bouncers to deal with the men behind them. If rumor had it right, they could run from the top floor here all the way down the block through interconnecting corridors linking building to building and come out in a more respectable establishment. These corridors were a way to hide from the police.

Kangi pulled her after him, up the back stairs. Ling trailed them, practically kicking her boots off her feet. He screamed suddenly. She and Kangi whipped around to see one of the men dragging Ling back toward the door.

“No!” Kangi tried to force past her.

At the same time, two burly men jogged down the stairs hollering, “What are you kids doing in here?”

One of their pursuers took a shot, ripping the wooden stair rail up. The two doormen yelped, flattening against the wall. The men disappeared out the door with a struggling Ling. Kangi and Aurelia tried to follow, but the bouncers took hold of them.

“Are you crazy kids? You’ll get yourselves shot.”

“They don’t want to kill us!” Aurelia shouted. She wormed free, but by the time she reached the street, the men were gone.

Next to her, Kangi shook with fear or rage—or both, she decided. “I can’t lose someone else!”

Behind them, the doormen slammed the door. They’d be of no help.

“We need to get Sheriff Bullock,” Kangi said.

“And then we need to get to the Minerva.” Aurelia rubbed her thigh. “I know Renteger. He’s the captain of a pirate airship, the Raptor. I bet they’ll be taking wind fast now. They have to know the sheriff will round up a posse and come after them.”

“Bullock doesn’t have airships,” Kangi protested, running for the main street.

Aurelia ran after him, her thigh muscles cramping. “Maybe not, but I do.”

He glanced over his shoulder then hustled her into the nearest store. “Will your mother help?”

“Of course. She likes Ling, and she isn’t going to let them sell him into slavery somewhere.”

“Stay here. I’ll be right back as soon as I tell the sheriff.”

Aurelia wanted to protest, but she listened to her leg and to reason. She suspected if she took her limb off now she’d see blisters on her stump. She nodded and Kangi raced off, almost flying like his namesake. Impatience and fear ate her up as she waited. Aurelia took shelter in the store, looking out the window. She didn’t think the men would be back, but she didn’t want to chance loitering about in the street.

To her surprise, Kangi rode back up on Wind. She limped out as he slithered off the mare. Kangi boosted her up and swung into place behind her. He urged Wind into a gallop, making Aurelia cling tightly as the ride punished her spine.

“The sheriff wanted to talk to me too long about the dead man and the people who took Ling. I had to make a run for it if we want your mother to get to the skies. I’ll talk to him later once we get Ling back.” Kangi’s voice sounded tight and stressed in her ear. “I should have talked to the Chinese mayor too.”

Aurelia knew the Chinese had their own separate city within a city, but she didn’t know if they had their own separate lawmen. “Bullock will probably do that,” she reassured him even though she knew it might not be true.

Kangi grunted, urging Wind even faster. When they reached the docks, he tied Wind to the post. Aurelia didn’t wait for him to start climbing the ladder to the Minerva. She prayed her mother would be on board, supervising whatever needed doing and not somewhere in town, something she probably should have thought of sooner.

Luckily her mother was watching Dodson and his men replace a piece of decking. She widened her eyes seeing them.

“What’s wrong?”

“We saw a man die in front of us, and those men tried to kidnap us!” Aurelia cried.

“They got Ling!”

“Oh my god.” Her mother swept Aurelia up in a hug.

“We got the lawmen after them,” Kangi added.

“And they’re taking Ling to Renteger to sell him. We can’t let that happen, Mom!”

Letting Aurelia go, her mother stalked over and slapped a hand to the ship’s control panel setting off the general call-to-arms siren. The head-shredding noise would be heard all through the city. Her mother looked to Aurelia. “Standard pirate protocol.”

Aurelia nodded, grabbing Kangi’s hand. She dragged him deeper into the ship to the weapons locker. Selecting two phlogiston guns, Aurelia handed one to Kangi. He eyed it, obviously unfamiliar with the weapon. She tapped a control toggle on its side. “If you push this down, it’ll stun whoever you hit. Up, and you can kill them. You have several shots on stun, fewer on the kill setting. You’ll probably need another weapon. The adults always want us to hang back, but you need to protect yourself. Hard to know what pirates will do. Can you shoot at all?”

He narrowed his eyes. “I’m Lakota. We’re natural warriors,” he huffed.

Knowing he was worried about Ling, Aurelia didn’t comment about him getting defensive.

“But I’ve only shot rifles, not this,” Kangi admitted more contritely.

“Point and shoot, only no kickback like with a rifle.” Aurelia helped herself to a pistol as well.

Kangi found a long slender staff. He swished it and smiled, nodding to himself.

“That’s not a weapon. The rigger monkeys use it to untangle ropes if necessary,” Aurelia said.

Kangi shrugged. “It’ll do.”

“All right then. Come on.” She inclined her head toward the door. He slipped out and she followed.

By the time they returned to the deck, airship men were boiling over the railing. Excitement slipped deep into Aurelia’s skin. Fear, too, of course, but she couldn’t deny the rush of chasing down pirates. The battles were terrifying, but the chase thrilled her. Aurelia wanted to be the best fighter pilot. One day, she felt confident she would be.

“How will your mother even know where to find Renteger?” Kangi asked, his voice low. “He won’t be here at the port.”

“No, they’ll be at some hidden docking port. The pirates are pretty tricky about that,” Aurelia said, nudging Kangi toward the pilot house. “Mom will want us to stay here. It’ll be safer.” Aurelia felt the ship lurch slightly.