Sexy Steampunk Babes: Chapter Thirty One (Patreon)

Verity struggled to fight down a frown as she watched her teammate ‘chat up’ a pair of his family’s guardswomen from around the corner.

Sure, he was technically just trying to help his team gain access to the family hangar, but it still wasn’t right!

It just wasn’t… proper, for a lad to be acting like that. Being all flirty to get what he wanted.

Not proper. Not proper at all.

“What do you think he’s saying?” Bonnlyn asked from beneath her own position behind a nearby bush, wincing only slightly as the morning frost coating some of its leaves brushed against her exposed neck.

“’Hey, I’ve got a big dick. I’ll show it to you if you let me and my teammates take a peek inside the hangar?’” Olzenya said, lowering her voice to imitate their teammate, even as she tucked her hands under her armpits for warmth.

The elf pointedly wasn’t watching the hangar where William’s conversation was taking place, instead her back was to the wall Verity was hiding behind, a severely rugged up Marline not far from her.

“As much as part of me thinks that might actually work,” the dark elf muttered, her teeth chittering as she spoke to her fellow elf. “I’m pretty certain even William wouldn’t be that brazen. Even if he’s currently on the outs with his family, I’m certain the guards will recognize that he is still part of it. He’s probably just reminding them of that.”

“You don’t sound certain,” Olzenya pointed out.

The dark elf clearly thought about arguing that she was, before honesty compelled her to simply remain quiet as she continued to shiver.

“He’s not that bad!” Verity grunted, puffs of steam issuing from her mouth as she spoke.

“He really is,” Bonnlyn said, prompting the orc to send the dwarf a look of betrayal. “What? I love the guy like… something complicated, but you can’t deny that he’s a few sandwiches short of a picnic after what happened last year. Hell, have you seen the way his aunts were watching him? They’re as mystified by our team leader as we are. And they raised him!”

“He’s our team leader!” Verity squawked. “He helped us beat a team of third years last semester! Third years! And he figured out how to kill krakens! And… a bunch of other stuff.”

Even six months on she could scarcely believe it. Not least of all because he’d accomplished the latter items without any of the other members of the team even knowing about it.

Beyond Marline…

That thought stung a little. Even if she understood the reasoning for it.

“And the fact that he had us fight a team of third years in our first year, while simultaneously fighting Al’Hundra for access to her nest, doesn’t do much to refute the shortstack’s point,” Olzeyna drawled. “Being a freaky genius savant doesn’t mean he’s not crazier than a sack of foxes.”

“As much as it pains me, given the service he’s done for my house,” Marline murmured quietly. “Even I’m forced to admit that his methods are… unorthodox.”

Traitors! The lot of them! “Well, if he’s so bad, why did you all agree to spend Winter-Fast at his family’s estate?”

The high elf shrugged. “Beats going home.”

Marline nodded. “Given his recent troubles with his family, I thought it wise to… keep him company during his visit. My family were saddened, but understood.”

Bonnlyn just made a dismissive gesture. “Same as you. I see my family plenty enough while we’re in the academy. Compared to that, an invitation to stay the week at a noble’s estate sounded much more interesting.”

“I’m glad to know my family’s estate arouses such excitement in my team,” A new voice deadpanned.

Surprised, all four girls turned to see the team leader and only male member of Team Seven had arrived.

Bonnlyn was the first to recover, brushing through the awkwardness with the same bull-headed manner she approached most things. “What did they say!?”

William smiled, apparently unbothered by the fact that his team had apparently just been discussing how firm his grasp on sanity actually was. “We can go in. So long as I ‘swear not to touch anything’. Oh, and they’re sending a runner for my aunt. I’ve no idea why they felt the need to tell me that, but they did.”

“Awesome!” Bonnlyn cried as she all-but dashed towards the shard hangar.

The rest of the team followed along behind, albeit at a slightly more sedate pace.

“How’d you convince them?” Verity asked in what she hoped was a casual manner.

“Well, my recent troubles with my family aside, I am still a part of the family. I just reminded them of that fact.” The boy shrugged.

“‘Troubles’, he says.” Olzenya scoffed. “Will, I’ve got troubles with my family. You were about two seconds from being locked up when we showed up last night.”

Marline elbowed her friend in the side for being so callous, but William seemed unbothered. “Perhaps.”

To say the meal that had followed that arrival had been tense was something of an understatement. Which wasn’t all that surprising given that William had absolutely wrecked his mother’s plans by rather violently breaking off his engagement with his then fiancée.

Needless to say, the Blackstone-Ashfield alliance was now rather dead in the water, and with it, the Ashfield Countess’ plans to claim the Summerfield Duchy once the current heirless duchess passed on.

Plans that had been years in the making.

Admittedly, that whole scheme had required multiple explanations for Verity to understand, but with said context the orc could well understand why her team leader’s mother seemed torn between hugging and throttling her son when the team had shown up at her door.

“I’m serious,” Olzenya continued, heedless of Marline’s continued elbowing. “I’m pretty sure it was  only the fact that you arrived on a Royal Navy Sloop with a contingent of Royal Marines that kept you from being placed on ‘indefinite house arrest’ for the rest of your life.”

Again, rather than be offended, William just laughed. “Yes, and that’s why I acceded to our Royal Overlord’s requests that I have an escort for our trip.”

Marline rolled her eyes. “‘Acceded’ he says, as if it was a choice.”

The boy just shrugged, as if he wasn’t talking about their nation’s ruler – a figure so far above Verity that it made her head spin just thinking about it. “Well, given that she didn’t actually want me to come at all, I’d say the choice was indeed mine, after a fashion.”

“Honestly, I’m still not entirely sure why you wanted to come out here.” Olzenya said. “Part of me thought you wanted to patch up relations with your family, given… the whole shitshow last semester, but given how you and your mother are avoiding each other, that’s clearly not on the agenda.”

William moved to respond, before being interrupted by a distant shout. “Will!”

The quartet turned as one, to see a young girl darting towards them from the direction of the main house – followed by a trio of harried looking maids.

The sight made the boy grin. “I promised my sister I’d visit.”

It was actually a strange thing for Verity to see. Normally their team leader’s smiles were a tad… fake. Not outrageously so, but it was something Verity had begun to pick up on.

Here and now though? It looked all too genuine.

…The orc girl glanced away as an uncomfortable flutter ran through her stomach. Thankfully, no one seemed to notice.

“It seems I won’t be able to join you for our little impromptu Shard inspection,” William said. “Apparently my younger sibling has decided to move our planned afternoon meeting forward.”

With that said, the boy gave them each a final wave before changing course towards the half-elf girl. When they met, the young man swept the half-elf up into a great hug and swung around like so much luggage, eliciting great shrieks of glee.

It was a familiar move, one Verity had performed and been subject to with her own siblings – though it was amusing to see just how scandalized the Ashfield heiress’ maids looked as their charge was swung about.

Nearby, Olzenya sighed affectionately, before gesturing back to the hangar. “Well, we might have lost our intrepid leader, but I say our expedition continues.”

“Aye.” Marline smirked.

Slipping past the two guards positioned by the hangar’s entrance, the girls had to squint a bit in the low gloom of the building’s interior. Well, Marline did, given the naturally shaded nature of her silver eyes. Olzenya probably didn’t, given the huge black pupils of her own.

Still, despite the relative gloom of the building, the low lightning did nothing to take away from the majesty of the two craft that occupied the space.

“A Drake,” Marline breathed as she identified the fighter craft.

Though she needn’t have bothered. There wasn’t a girl in Lindholm that couldn’t identify a Drake by sight. A bit old by the standards of Shards now, the craft still made up the mainstay of the Royal Navy’s fighter capacity.

The small wing tips that jutted out from the edges of the rear-mounted wings made her think of a shark’s fin. An image that was only reinforced by the gleaming silver of its aluminium skin. Though that comparison was only slightly marred by the bulbous brass aether ballasts that ran along the machine’s side. Only slightly though, given that just like a shark, the Drake had teeth.

Four aether-powered-repeating-cannons sat at the very front of the craft, each one more than capable of shredding any foe they came across.

She smiled.

Back when she’d been working on her… old mistress’ estate, she’d more than once craned her head to the skies in hopes of catching a glimpse of similar skimmed craft as they darted past on some patrol or another – blue-green aether trailing from the wings of the great machines.

Each time the sight had been enough to make her heart skip a beat.

…And someday soon she’d be able to fly one of them.

“And a Wyvern,” Bonnlyn chirped excitedly from where she was perched on the wing of the craft in question.

Indeed, to the left of the Drake sat a Wyvern, the two seater fighter-bomber design slightly older than the Drake – and significantly less storied. If the Drake looked like a sleek silver shark, then the Wyvern was a fat tuna.

“Get down from there you goblin!” Olzenya snapped, the moment of awe apparently broken by the sight of their teammate clambering all over the craft they’d ‘promised not to touch’.

The dwarf rolled her eyes, but did as the high elf requested. Clumsily. Though she continued talking even as she slid off the wing. “I was just trying to figure out the beast’s history. The Drake’s almost factory new, but this girly apparently suffered a bad crash at some point. You can see the weld lines along one of the wings.”

“That, would be my nephew’s work,” a voice called from behind them. “The breaking. Not the fixing.”

The girl’s of team seven turned as one, each snapping off a salute at the Marine Knight that had just entered the hangar.

The short woman laughed at the sight as she strode over to the Drake. “At ease, girls. I’m not exactly in uniform right now.”

Indeed she wasn’t, clad in a leather jacket and thick brown pants, the crest that identified her as Marine-Knight – and a pilot besides – was still clearly visible on her chest.

Still, the members of team seven relaxed as best they could as William’s aunt turned away from the Drake to take them all in. “So, you’re my law-son’s teammates. I’m sorry that I wasn’t able to greet you all lastnight. Your arrival took a lot of us off guard and I was out scouting for a bandit camp at the time.”

“Bandits, ma’am?” Olzenya asked.

The woman just shrugged. “Nothing worth mentioning. Just the usual winter shenanigans.”

As one the, girl’s nodded in understanding.

Seasonal banditry was an unfortunate reality of life. Something that happened each year, but tended to be especially bad after a poor harvest.

As the name suggested, it was generally an act performed by farmers looking to ‘supplement’ their income through the harsher winter months by preying on nearby trading. As a result, most households tended to intensify their patrols during the colder seasons.

“Anyway, I’m Karla Ashfield, but you can all call me Knight Ashfield.” Despite her otherwise genial demeanour, there was no missing the slight… heat at the end of that sentence. “Don’t bother introducing yourselves. I watched that last bout of yours myself and I’m more than familiar with each of you.”

“Pleasure to meet you, ma’am” Bonnlyn said, her voice so polite that Verity actually had to double check it was actually the dwarf that spoke. “Your law-son speaks highly of you.”

At those words, a complicated expression flashed across the woman’s face, though there was no missing the hint of pride that followed it. “Well of course, I’m his favourite aunt after all. I’m not surprised he’s been bragging about me.”

Verity didn’t know if she’d take things that far, but she wisely chose not to voice that opinion.

“Just so,” the dwarf agreed easily. “With that said, I can’t help but notice that these craft are both lacking their cores.”

They were? Had that been why Bonnlyn had been perched on the wing of the Wyvern when they’d walked in? Normally the shard-core was positioned directly beneath the pilot and could be accessed by a hatch just under their feet.

“Is House Ashfield planning on upgrading its Shard complement in the near future?” Bonnlyn continued, her mercantile mind no doubt seeing the opportunity for profit that two empty shard hulls would create in a market that was about to be flooded with mithril-cores as a result of William’s latest invention.

Hell, their team would be interested. Once they got back to the academy, they’d be second years, and that meant Shard training. And while the academy allowed them access to their fleet of Unicorn training craft, for intra-academy competitions teams were allowed to make use of ‘private craft’.

“Not at all.” The pilot laughed. “I’m afraid that’s a result of William’s handiwork.”

As she spoke, the woman reached into her jacket pocket, and the girls all gasped as she pulled loose a glowing shard of metal.

A mithril-shard.

The thing that powered a shard-craft. Indeed, that was the reason for the name, given that mithril-shards were literally shards of a greater mithril-core. And owing to their smaller relative size, they lacked the power to fill an entire airship’s ballasts like a true core could, but some enterprising engineers had discovered that said lesser output could allow for alternative means of flight in smaller craft.

Verity glanced over at the single propeller attached to the back of the Drake.

Mithril’s ability to continuously produce aether was instead used, not to generate lift through the vapor’s lighter than air properties, but instead to generate pressure that in turn spun the Drake’s propellers.

Oh, certainly it could fill the smaller craft’s ballasts as well, but as a rule of thumb, most of the power would go to spinning the propeller during normal flight.

That propeller, in turn, would generate speed by pushing the air. That speed allowed air to flow over the wings, which generated lift.

Which in turn created flight.

Thus, where an Airship floated through the air – a shard cut through it like a knife.

“William, ma’am?” Marline asked quietly, drawing Verity back from her thoughts.

The pilot woman cocked her head. “Oh, he didn’t tell you? His last act in this household, and the one that got him sent out to the academy, was to steal one of our Shards for a… rescue of sorts. Of two peasants whose boat got caught out in a storm. A noble enough move if it hadn’t been so foolish.”

The girls all glanced between each other at those words, more than a little scandalized… albeit not terribly surprised.

…Though Verity found the man somehow climbing even higher in her esteem at the thought that he’d risked his house’s ire to help a pair of normal people.

People like her.

Or at least, like she used to be.

To be honest, some part of her still struggled with the idea that she wasn’t a normal person anymore. She was a noble now. A very minor unlanded one to be sure, but a noble all the same.

“That, uh,” Olzenya started to say, her opinion of William’s actions no doubt running contrary to Verity’s own. “Was… noble?”

“Stupid,” Karla all-but agreed. “Still, as they say, you learn more from mistakes than successes. And it did lead us to developing this.”

As she spoke, she gestured to the chain attached to the core she was holding. “We keep this thing and her sister in a lockbox when the shard’s aren’t actively in use. Keeps them a lot safer than they’d be otherwise.”

That was… actually a fairly clever idea.

She’d more than once heard her more rebellious fellow slaves ruminating on the idea of stealing a shard from the mistress’s hangar and just… flying away.

It was a fool’s dream to be sure, more of an idle hope than anything, given the guards on the hangars and the fact that they as slaves didn’t know how to actually fly a shard.

But… even that pie in the sky dream would be stymied by the fact that the prize and the means to escape with it had been separated by the Ashfield household.

“A brilliant idea.” Marline said, admiration on full display as she stared at the vaguely key-shaped shard the woman was holding. “One that I could see delaying a sortie in a surprise, but that’s a minor drawback compared to the added security it provides.”

Yes, Verity could see why such a system would appeal to the dark elf given her family history. Sure, William’s actions had resulted in them getting a replacement for it, but a lifetime of ingrained thinking wouldn’t shift overnight.

Indeed, now that they actually had a core once more, the orc imagined the Greygrass family would be all the more fanatical in guarding it – and any shards that were borne of the main core.

“Feel free to spread it around,” Karla shrugged absentmindedly. “It’s a simple enough thing to do, even if we did have to reconfigure the engine a bit for easy slotting and removal. Did most of it myself to be honest.”

That was a little surprising. Verity thought the Ashfields would guard their ‘innovation’ a bit more strongly.

“I’d be interested in seeing that,” Marline nodded eagerly.

The woman paused, before something… dangerous “Well, how about an in-person show?” She moved over to a tarp covered object in the back corner. “You girls are about to enter your second year right? Start on Sshard stuff?”

The quarter nodded, poorly hidden excitement pervading their frames at the implications of the woman’s words – even Olzenya’s.

“Well, how about I take you up and you could try handle the stick for a bit?” The woman asked grandly as she pulled on the tarp.

To reveal a worn-looking but still perfectly serviceable Unicorn.

Verity literally couldn’t say ‘yes’ fast enough.

This was the best day ever!

-----------------------

“We’re going to die!”

To say that Verity was panicking as she desperately yanked at the controls of her craft was something of an understatement. The constant spinning of the world beyond her cockpit glass didn’t help matters, as she could already feel a nauseous sensation building in her gut. A gut that seemed determined to force its way up into her chest – along with a dozen butterflies.

All while her shard hurtled toward the ground.

“At this rate, yes.” ‘Auntie’ Karla actually had the audacity to sound bored as the orc fought desperately to save them both. “You should probably do something about this flatspin.”

“What do you think I’m trying to do!” She all but snapped at the infuriating woman as she fought with the controls.

But no matter how much she tugged at the flight stick, the damn plane refused to break out of its spin.

Have to get the nose down, she thought franticly as she tried to recall her academy’s theoretical lessons on the subject. Get air moving over the control surfaces.

Unfortunately, the shard refused to co-operate.

“I figure we’ve got maybe forty seconds before we pancake,” Karla drawled. “Thirty nine. Thirty eight-”

Verity moved to yell back, before being forced to swallow both that and a bout of bile as she struggled to fight another bout of nausea from the spinning.

Shit, were they really going to have to bail?

Was she going to be responsible for wrecking the Ashfield’s Shard? On her first flight?

She knew her family didn’t have the kind of coin to pay for it if she did.

Sure, Unicorn Training Craft were designed to be cheap and quick to replace - which was why they were only made of wood, not aluminium - but the two-seater design was still-

“Just passed two thousand meters. And I’m taking over,” the human woman behind her said.

Almost instantly Verity felt the controls under her hands go slack as Karla engaged the ‘instructor’s controls’ from her own seat behind the orc.

“First, let’s stop the spinning.” The shard shifted, as beneath them valves opened and closed to redirect aether from the shard’s mithril core. “Redirecting pressure from props to the right exhaust.”

Blue-green gas burst from the exhaust thrusters positioned to the rear of the right wing, arresting the shard’s spin in moments. Not it’s descent though. The plane’s nose was still level with the horizon. And the ground beneath them was only getting closer.

Would they still have to jump!?

“Redirecting pressure from right exhaust to rear ballasts one and two.”

Another series of clunks rang out as Karla pushed and pulled at some of the levers in front of her, the well-oiled mechanical interfaces acceding to the woman’s demands with only a small amount of pressure.

Slowly, the front of the shard started to dip – revealing just how close the ground really was as it rushed up to meet them.

“Ma’am!?” Verity shouted in fear. “We’re not going to make it! We should-”

“It’s fine,” the brunette responded. “Pressure returning to propellors.”

Another two clunks that Verity barely heard over the blood pounding in her ears rang out. “I really think we should bail!”

They were supposed to have bailed the second they stalled below five hundred meters! That was what the manual’s said!

“It’s fine,” she heard the woman say. “Probably.”

“Probably!?” She shrieked as they continued hurtling towards the ground.

“Almost definitely,” the human grunted as the orc heard her finally pull back on the flight stick.

The cadet was forced down into her seat as the plane started to pull up, the shard’s wooden frame creaking as the g-forces of the maneuver made the edges of her vision blur slightly. Yet even as the shard pulled up, the ground below them continued to grow larger as they were still on a descent angle.

The wide-open fields beyond the walls of the Ashfield estate loomed closer and closer.

Even if they bailed now, the rear propellor wouldn’t have enough time to detach! It’d likely shred at least one of them as it cartwheeled loose!

…Still, she found herself reaching for the release valve on her seat, the aether she’d channelled into the gas-tank beneath her chair primed to blow off the cockpit and send her screaming up into the air with just an errant-

And then they were up - the bottom of their craft all-but skimming the grass off the field beneath them before it shot back up into the air.

“See?” Karla breathed as the pair continued to climb once more. “We were fine.”

The orc – now that she wasn’t the one in control of the craft, nor being squished into her feet by g-forces, turned in her restraints to glare at her teammate. “C-couldn’t you have taken over sooner, ma’am?”

The human actually had the audacity to shrug in her seat, her tinted goggles obscuring her gaze from the roc, but doing nothing to hide the human woman’s shit-eating grin. “I mean, you were the one who put us into a flat-spin. I was hoping if I gave you a little longer you’d remember that you had more options available to you than just… yanking on the flight stick.”

Verity frowned at the words, even as she turned forward in her chair.

…Some part of her had a growing suspicion.

Was the woman… hazing her?

“Honestly, if this is the calibre of my darling nephew’s teammates, well, I’m a little worried,” the pilot continued.

And all-but confirmed Verity’s thoughts as she did.

Suddenly the Ashfield’s shark-like smirk when she’d revealed the Unicorn made sense. She’d wanted to scare the shit out of all the girl’s hanging around her ‘favourite law-son’.

And the worse thing was, Verity couldn’t even complain! You know, even if she could get around the staggering difference in rank between them.

Because she’d done the exact same thing to the girls who’d come sniffing around her younger brother back when they’d worked on the farms!

Ugh, she thought frustratedly even as another bout of nausea ran through her.

Her first flight in a shard had been soured by an overprotective aunt trying to scare the shit out of her.

…Suddenly Bonnlyn’s wobbly legs and frown made sense when she’d clambered out of the Shard after her flight.

“Well, we’re back at altitude,” the devilish woman said. “Take the controls again whenever you’re ready.”

Ugh.

Was it wrong to know that she was glad that she wouldn’t be the only member of Team Seven to suffer this?

Then another thought occurred.

And lucky William is just… chatting with his sister while I have to fight to keep down breakfast, she thought with unusual venom.

The lucky lad.

-------------------------

William struggled not to let a stray bead of sweat run down his forehead as he suffered one of the worst fates imaginable.

His little sister was mad at him.

Really mad.

AN: I actually wanted to include the sister conversation in this chapter because it’s been a long time coming, but we’re at 5k words now. So it looks like it’s going to be the first thing next chapter.

Either way, I thought this is was a nice ‘slice of life-esque’ wind down chapter after the insanity and politics of the end of last book - while also going a bit more into Shards which are going to be a big part of this book :D