Brotherhood of the Strange (Kingship, Tales from the Aether Book 1) Read Online Free PDF

to remember the past, to him it had always seemed a mute accusation, a reminder of a singular action he had spent the past seven years quietly trying to make up for. However, he had to admit as her head disappeared below the deck, that Wingnut, Molly, had come a long way. Though she would always bear more than her share of grief, she had again found joy in life. She often now sang as she worked, though she would never admit it. The bar fights she got into now seemed sometimes more for the fun of it rather than a bellicose need to lash out at the world and punish some unsuspecting bar fly for her hard life. Also, as dirty and greasy as she was when she was working on Kingship’s engines, her raven hair was always done up in a manner more becoming a princess in an evening gown attending a ball, than an engineer working on a fifty-year old aethership wearing her deceased husband’s jumpsuit.
    Vance was pulled from any further musings by the ring of an alarm bell. Two short blasts meant no emergency, just a request for the captain to report to the bridge. If it had been really important he would have been addressed via a ship wide announcement. Pocketing his still warm pipe, he made his way towards the front of the vessel, walking down the red carpeted main corridor, past the lavish crew quarters that once served as state rooms for visiting dignitaries. Reaching the beautifully decorated iron wrought staircase, Vance descended from the main deck down to the crew deck, the lowest of the triple decked ship, and made his way to the bow where he found Winston and Afa in heated, but friendly discussion.
    “I’m tellin’ ya lad,” Winston was saying is his thick Scottish brogue, “that cursed thing’s squakin’ more and more these days. Best thing to do would be ta tear it out and toss it overboard.”
    “That equipment is a part of this ship,” replied Afa, his soft voice belying his enormous stature. “To remove it would equate removing a piece of its history, and soul.”
    Winston’s reply was immediate, “Don’t be lecturin’ me lad! I know the ‘soul’ of this old girl better than any of you wee ones, and I’ll say it again, it’s only some kind of fangled telegraph, none of us ever could get it to work quite right none too often. And the few times it did? Well, believe me, bad things always followed.”
    Vance smiled as he watched the exchange between his aged but spry pilot, Winston, and Afa, a man whose sheer size, exotic Polynesian heritage, and intimidating manner had quickly earned him the title of ‘The Negotiator’. The two took, it seemed, a childlike delight in arguing with one another, though Afa never really argued. He would always calmly make his points and counterpoints allowing Winston’s blustering to grow louder and more nonsensical. In truth, they both respected the other and found boisterous discussion a great way to pass the leagues upon leagues of open air the Kingship traveled. Their argument was one that had been recurring off and on for the past several months.
    The problem had begun with a few muffled sounds of a screeching static, a sound similar to interference from wireless Morse. At first the crew had ignored it, as it had only happened a handful of times and even then it had not been overly loud. No one could quite figure out the source of it, the faint vibrations making their way through the various talk tubes and passageways. As old as she was, the Kingship was prone to more than her share of strange sounds, and it had eventually been chalked up to yet another personality quirk of the vessel they called home. After a few weeks it had grown less frequent, and finally ceased altogether. One evening some two weeks later, the crew was gathered in one corner of the large common room by the kitchen where Afa had just cooked up one of his many famous recipes. As they began to tuck in, the sound again was heard, this time with a magnitude that rattled windows and forced protective