The Mighty Airship Kaede. (The Mighty Airships of Earth. Book 1) Read online

  Contents

  Title Page.

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION:

  Dedication

  CHAPTER ONE New Job.

  CHAPTER TWO The Airship.

  CHAPTER THREE Get Ready, Get Set...

  CHAPTER FOUR Go!

  CHAPTER FIVE Escape!

  CHAPTER SIX No Escape!

  CHAPTER SEVEN Enemy Base.

  CHAPTER EIGHT Detour to Toronto.

  CHAPTER NINE James Family.

  CHAPTER TEN Hired Gunman.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN Keeping Up Appearances.

  CHAPTER TWELVE Wendy Goes To Town.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN The Play...

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN Of Love.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN The Morning After.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN Problems at the Temple.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Chief Grey.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Kidnapping and Beatings.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN Stealing From Kidnappers.

  CHAPTER TWENTY Broken.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE Healing.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO The Seige of Pete's Piss.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE Belle Meets Seraphine.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR Dinner Date.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE Sorry, No Momiji Here.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX His Child.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN Meeting the Jameses.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT Confessions of Love.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE Old School and New School Spying.

  CHAPTER THIRTY The Brig.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE Custer's Hope.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO Alien Satellites.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE Everyone is Going South.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR Family.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE Secrets.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX Crazy New Ideas.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN A Friendly Meal.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT Colonel Custer.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE The Italian Nun.

  CHAPTER FORTY Dangers of Alien Tech.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE Klein and James.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO Jujutsu Problems.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE Preparing for a Journey.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR Seige of Detroit.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE President Jackson.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX Horse Trading.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN Strike the Fort.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT Message from Detroit.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE Ellie and the Wangs.

  CHAPTER FIFTY Repair.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE Future Plans.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO The Truth of Spies.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE Supersonic Scouting.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR The Choice.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE The Challenge.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX The Duel.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN Return of Morgan.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT Who to Trust?

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE Martians Spies.

  CHAPTER SIXTY Escape?

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE Ashton's Anger.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO Painful Escape.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE Medicine, Rockets, and Guns.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR Going Down!

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE Consequences.

  Character List.

  The Mighty Airships of Earth Timeline:

  Join my email list.

  Things to Come

  Author's Note

  Other Books

  THE MIGHTY AIRSHIP KAEDE

  Gary W. Feather

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION:

  The Mighty Airship Kaede

  All Contents copyright 2016.

  Gary W. Feather

  Published by Interstellar Bushido Publishing.

  All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in the fiction in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts there of, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  Author website: www.garywfeatherauthor.com

  Dedicated to my paternal great great great grandfather Jacob O. Feather (1800-1883).

  CHAPTER ONE

  New Job.

  The hooves of the four horses mashed into the mud as they pulled the carriage along the road. Within the carriage Lieutenant 2nd class Izumo Hirohira wished he hadn't informed the boring Englishman that he knew English. The carriage shook as it stopped causing Hirohira to hit his head on the wall on his right.

  "Ahoka!" Hirohira cursed. He looked around at the other passengers to apologize for his outburst, but most of the other passengers had done the same in their own language-English or Spanish.

  Those men shouldn't curse like that, especially in front of the ladies in here. Barbarians! No! I don't want to think like that! I cursed too, so who am I to complain?

  The door on Hirohira's right burst open. The double muzzle of a shotgun poked inside. The ladies screamed; so did some of the men. Everyone raised their hands in the air without being told. The man with the shotgun looked Indios, or maybe of mixed blood, Hirohira wasn't sure.

  Indios was the Spanish name for the native people of California and the rest of the Americas. The Indios man gestured for them to come out and Hirohira stepped back.

  "Out! Out of the stagecoach," another man said. This one was white, and he said it first in Spanish, then in English and Japanese with a Spanish accent. "Do as you're told! Obey or die in the mud!"

  The Spaniard fired off a shot over his head with his grimy revolver that was as grimy as the rest of his clothes, except for the fancy European top hat on his head. The bandits wore brown handkerchiefs covering half their faces.

  Hirohira helped an elderly Spanish couple out of the carriage; Mr. and Mrs. Perez de Medina. “Thank you, Don.”

  The last two to get out were an obnoxious Englishman and his friend. Hirohira stepped his wooden geta into the mud and was happy that he had put them on when he disembarked from the commercial airship in the rain. He checked his pocket watch--7:39 am--while holding his bamboo umbrella in his left hand in a weak attempt to hide the two guns he wore. He stuck the watch inside his new green kataginu jacket that his mother had bought him. Hirohira hoped that his green hakama trousers didn't get any mud on them.

  "Don't worry, ladies, we only want your money," the Spaniard said and then looked over at Hirohira. "Let's start with the stinking Japanman. Nice umbrella..."

  The Spaniard waved his revolver at Hirohira; it was an old Colt Dragoon that had seen better days. Hirohira glanced at the Indios behind the Spaniard with the shotgun. Up on the carriage’s driver’s seat was a third bandit by the driver; he clubbed the driver with a revolver.

  Hirohira placed the three men's locations in his mind's eye. He tossed the umbrella, flipped the thin leather strap off his Colt Katana revolver.

  Hirohira pulled the Colt Katana out like his ancestors would have done with a sword. He struck underneath the Spaniard's gun barrel with his own and the Spaniard's gun fired off skyward. Hirohira turned and shot the third bandit in the heart. Hirohira grabbed the Spaniard's gun-hand to control it and shot the Indios. He blocked the Spaniard’s kick, but the Spaniard grabbed his arm. The two men tussled, until Hirohira tripped him. Once the Spaniard hit the ground, he shot the man in the forehead.

  "Oh my God!" exclaimed one of the Englishmen. "You could have gotten us all killed!"

  "Don't be a fool, Charles," his friend said.

  Charles just snorted.

  Hirohira sheathed his gun as he had been taught by his sensei long ago with the barrel sliding across the holster's hole so that he wouldn't need to look to
holster it. Like many modern samurai, at the age of four, in his Teppo Iaijutsu class, he had been taught how to draw and fire a .22 revolver.

  Ahoka! Hirohira thought. Buddhas and kami I just killed someone. I killed three men! Three! They'd told me that it was lawless in California, but I didn't know it until now.

  Hirohira looked up at the driver, his legs shaking. "Uh-you okay, mister?" Hirohira said in English.

  "Yes, sir." The driver coughed and spat some blood on the ground. "I've had worse things happen to me. Ladies and gentlemen, please get back into the carriage and we'll be off."

  Hirohira picked up his umbrella before entering the carriage.

  #

  Hirohira stepped off the carriage and looked at his pocket watch. 8:50 a.m. A little late, but not too bad considering what happened. He heard the noisy clicking sound of another carriage, but it had no horses. Instead, it was run by one of those clockwork engines invented in Naha, Okinawa by an English refugee and an Okinawan man. He watched it go and continued on to his destination and the new assignment.

  I can't believe this. Here I am. Such a modern city and so far from home. They have dozens of airship berths, both military and commercial, in all sizes. There are trains, printing presses and various kinds of industries. All powered by steam or clockwork mechanisms! There's even talk of something called atomic power. Whatever that is. Something to do with those Martians that old man mentioned. I need to learn Spanish too. So many things still in Spanish. How many years ago did we take it from them? Stop it! Calm down! Just try not to look like a country bumpkin...which is what I am. Dammit!

  Hirohira sighed and knocked on the door of an old Spanish mansion. The door opened and a brown-skinned woman appeared. Another Indios. She bowed politely and told him in heavily accented Japanese that Doctor Sakusa was in the air hanger, a large steel building behind the mansion. Hirohira thanked her and followed the path out to the back.

  Hirohira was a lower-class samurai, with hopes of raising his and his family's status. If it was possible, then Doctor Sakusa and her new ministry seemed his best bet.

  In the hanger, a Japanese woman, probably no older than thirty, sat working at a table. From where he stood, it looked like she was trying to twist a large rod into a strange contraption. She stopped and looked up as he entered the building. Her chestnut eyes had a look of intelligence and charisma that pulled him towards her. She was dressed in a plain brown kimono and wearing dirty white tabi socks on her feet. An older Japanese woman, probably middle-aged, stood quietly near some suitcases.

  "Uh--I'm sorry the door was open. I--" Hirohira said.

  "Ah! There you are," Doctor Sakusa said to him. "You look fairly strong." She rubbed her nose and got grease on it. "Why don't you see if you can get this modulating rod in place?"

  "Uh..." Hirohira was lost for words. A servant or worker ordering him around. A woman too.

  Hirohira could hear his father's grumbles: "These new ideas, whether they're from foreigners or not, are wrong. Commoners having a say in government. Merchants, fishermen, farmers, priests, prostitutes, and the untouchables. Ever since it was illegal for samurai to kill commoners and for men to beat their wives life has been going downhill. Damn Kyoto and Osaka women with their women's rights crap!"

  "Don't you understand Japanese?" she snapped out of his daydreaming.

  "Hai, wakarimasu," he said. "I'm Lieutenant 2nd class Izumo Hirohira of the Imperial Army Intelligence originally from Bungo Province, Kyushu. I've been assigned to be a bodyguard or something to Dr. Sakusa."

  "Konnichi wa, Hirohira-san. I'm Doctor Sakusa Momiji and she is my maid Shizuka." She pointed a thumb at the other woman. "Now be a dear and do this for me."

  Hirohira was a little surprised that she called him by his first name rather than his last, since they were strangers. Even though she was his superior it was considered impolite in traditional Japanese society, though he expected it from gaijin (foreigners). Still, he laid his umbrella down and did as he had been asked. He gripped the device where she told him to and twisted in until it clicked. All at once the contraption lit up and sang like a cricket.

  Doctor Sakusa clapped her hands and hugged him. "It works!"

  "Great. Uh...what is it?" Hirohira asked, also surprised that she had touched him in such an informal manner. He had been told that society was very relaxed on the frontier, but he hadn't expected that.

  "An altitude moderator," she said.

  "Oh, uhm..."

  Hirohira felt his ears and cheeks warm. I’m blushing! Stop it! He had earlier assumed the brilliant scientist Doctor Sakusa Momiji was a much older woman. Rather she was an attractive woman about his age. She stood up and he nervously got up. He worked to calm himself with breathing techniques that he had learned from his grandfather. He bowed and paused in mid bow to show respect to a superior before ending the bow.

  "I was sent by Colonel Kawana at the Imperial Army Intelligence Section in Honolulu to work with you." Hirohira bowed politely. "But I was never, uh...told what it is that you do here."

  Doctor Sakusa got up and returned the bow, surprisingly as an equal. "Welcome to my top secret operation against our most dreaded enemy-Martians."

  "Martians?" Hirohira said. "We've never been at war with them." He mentally kicked himself. He had argued against the ideas of his superior. He was always doing that. It was why the colonel had got rid of him.

  "We Japanese haven't," Doctor Sakusa said, without appearing to be upset. "But now we are a part of the Imperial Union and our comrades, the British, have. After the Martians took the British Isles from them I don't believe that the Martians will be satisfied by occupying just those islands. They'll want more. They're already pushing into Africa, Asia, and South America. I've even heard rumors of the North Pole."

  "Uh..."

  "Well anyway," she said. "Let's hand this over to Chief Grey and get airborne."

  "Finally." Shizuka picked up the suitcases.

  "Airborne?" Hirohira asked.

  "On the HMS Kaede,” Doctor Sakusa said. “Come on.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Airship.

  After following Doctor Sakusa through a door to the back half of the hanger Hirohira stopped to stare. The giant rigid airship floating in the air with half of it inside the hanger. It was as big as some of the giant cargo airships, but obviously armed with two rolls of cannons sticking out of gun ports on the huge gondola.

  “Impressive isn’t it? The first of her kind. A new lightweight armor gives her a lot of protection. Not to mention the weapons.”

  He had so many questions to ask about it, but he then noticed the men and woman in uniforms gathered under the airship. There were several ladders hanging from the gondola.

  “Lieutenant 2nd class Izumo, this is Captain Ian Parsons, commanding officer of the HMS Kaede," Doctor Sakusa said. “Captain Parsons this is my new secretary and bodyguard, Lieutenant Izumo.”

  "It's an honor to meet you, sir." Hirohira bowed with a long pause in mid bow and saluted. "She's a fine looking airship, Captain Parsons."

  "Thank you, Lieutenant," Captain Parsons saluted and bowed. "She is indeed."

  Doctor Sakusa turned to a rough-looking man about the captain's age. "This is Chief Petty Officer Grey. He’s the senior NCO aboard the Kaede. And here's the altitude moderator, chief." She handed the device to Chief Grey.

  "Aye, ma'am." Chief Grey gave a salute and then a bow.

  Hirohira noticed that the chief had almost turned away without returning the bow, but just barely remembered. Chief Grey handed the altitude modulator to a young crewman beside him. Hirohira was impressed by the two men’s speed and agilities as climbed a ladder.

  Captain Parsons introduced Izumo to Commander Matsuo Sumiko a tall chubby-faced Japanese woman with gentle black eyes, who was his first officer. Hirohira found Commander Matuso’s bow polite and well-practiced and so was her salute. She called up one of the ensigns quietly standing around their superior officers with the hope o
f not being noticed or rather yelled at.

  "Lieutenant, this is Ensign Paul Whitcomb," Commander Matsuo said. "He will give you a tour of the ship and show you to your quarters."

  "Yes, Commander Matsuo." Lieutenant Izumo saluted and bowed with a mid-bow pause to the first officer. Ensign Whitcomb saluted and bowed to Hirohira. The bow wasn’t appropriate for a junior to a superior, but he assumed that the young gaijin didn’t understand the insult. He turned to the ensign and gave him a bow with a very short pause of a superior to a junior, followed by a salute. He and the ensign climbed a ladder to the gondola.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Get Ready, Get Set...

  An hour later Hirohira found himself aboard a very large airship flying high and very fast above the clouds. He had been told over 700 miles an hour, he could barely wrap his mind around the speed. He stood on the forward observation deck, which was below the control room where the captain, first officer and the pilots stood watch. Earlier he had seen the navigator came here to get his settings before he returned to put them into his AM, or analytical machine, in the navigation room. An AM was a large device that could calculate faster and more accurately than any human being.

  There was also an Ensign Teague who was on BOW, Bow Observation Watch, though they hadn't talked much to each other aside from introductions.

  Hirohira could feel a gentle humming like a small waterfall under the souls of his feet. What kind of engine was it? Atomic? What was that? A steam engine he understood. It was louder and sent out harsher vibrations, but this quieter atomic power seemed magical.

  Hirohira pressed his index finger against the glass and felt moisture on it that he rubbed between his finger and thumb. He dropped his hand and it bumped against his oxygen mask that hung on a belt around his waist. Along the walls of the airship were emergency oxygen tanks, with dangling connection tubes, could be used if the sealed airship was holed. You just connected the mask and a tank. This was the same with all areas of the airship. The higher up one went in the atmosphere the thinner the oxygen became, so you needed an oxygen supply.