The Mask of Omegon (Gwen Farris Book 6) (22 page)

A man like that might even be
allowed to escape prison. Maybe get a job, if he could speak Mongolian. Not
that anyone had mentioned that to her at all. There hadn’t even been a hint. It
would require making the real Darnell vanish, too. The easy thing to do would
be just having him enlist in the Air Navy. He might be a joker and she didn’t
think highly of him for that, but he knew how to work on a ship. As far as
she’d been told, being crew on the Peregrine was pretty much the same as the Air
Navy, without the saluting. Though as far as she knew, thinking about it, they
didn’t do that there.

They probably had something
like
that however.

Given everything, it would probably
turn out to be the Nazi salute, just to mess with her head. That hadn’t been a
thing there, thankfully. They’d had a different version of the great war, but
no Hitler or death camps. Not that she’d been told about.

There were a half dozen crystals,
all smaller than the main one, to be loaded in the maneuvering rockets on the
sides of the craft. The thing was large enough to need six on either side. The
bag up top, a silver thing filled with hydrogen, was simply vast. The Peregrine
was only half sized, compared to most of the others in the fleet, too. It could
carry about a hundred tons of goods when it was fully loaded, which was
impressive enough.

Because it was small and captained
by the fleet Admiral, Katherine’s Uncle Thomas, they tended to get most of the
really expensive cargos. They had a low loss and breakage ratio, too, which
meant that when you sent things in, they tended to get there. A big reason for
that was how hard they worked all the time, securing the load, making sure
nothing shifted in the air.

Tom smiled at her, as the rest of
the men came in. The last one, Meter, waved as he did it. The man had a bit of
a big mouth, but he was a pretty good worker. A bit too old to be in the Air Navy,
perhaps, which was why he was still there. Fit however. Ready for whatever
came.

Actually, looking around at the new
people, it occurred to her that all of them were kind of hard seeming. Her
included. Tomas stuck out a bit, but even he looked a little like he belonged
on a military crew. That was a combination of his age, overall fitness and
short haircut.

Nodding, she forced herself to
smile.

Gloria waved at the first of the
wagons coming in.

“Get ready! Incoming!”

Tomas actually pretended not to
know her at all as they worked. Everything he did was that way. Well enough
that she didn’t think that anyone other than Gloria and Groundling realized
that he wasn’t exactly what he seemed, which was a decent looking guy who was
trying to keep the job he’d gotten. He was conscientious the
whole
time.

As much as the old hands, which
meant they took to him pretty easily. More so than they did her. Then, she’d
started out by unloading about half of the cargo by herself, using magic. It
was a great trick, and let her move more than any of the others could do by
hand. On the great side, that meant no one thought she was a slacker, taking up
valuable space and food on the airship.

The other side of that was the fact
that most of the men weren’t all that high on the magic scale. At least she
didn’t think they were. So it seemed kind of insane to them that she was there
at all. The woman thing didn’t help, because they were from the world they were.
On the great side, no one tried to get her into bed the whole time. A few did
flirt with her a bit. Those were the newer people that didn’t know she was Gwen
Farris. The older hands had a clue that way, but didn’t call her anything
except for Curly the whole time. She had curly hair. It made it easy to
remember.

Interestingly, the current voyage
had them going to Eng. Which was, she was nearly certain, the entirety of the
British Isles. Now it was a standalone country, instead of one of the four main
kingdoms. Gloria explained the real deal there, however, which was different
than Gwen had thought things were.

It happened when they were going
over a steam rocket in engineering.

“Eng is one of the outliers. For
political purposes it’s part of the Western Kingdom, even though it’s pretty
far away. They’ve seen a lot of fighting because of that. Most of the fleet is
in the waters off the coast. It’s not a great place to be right now. They need
shipments, but can’t get things from Europa as easily as normal. Nothing but
soldiers in their ports. Which is how it always goes. Most of this will be sold
at a good price, thanks to that. Not that it affects our share. We get
wholesale on this, like always.”

Gwen was using a fine wire brush,
one with copper tines for scrubbing with, on a brass fitting. Carefully, since
scratching the threads would probably make the seal fail. That would lower the
efficiency. Eventually causing the rocket to have to be replaced.

“Good. We don’t need to be part of
making things harder for anyone. Poor people. Hey… I need to go back, for my
show? Do you need anything from town? I can take an hour to get some shopping
done.”

The woman looked at her, smiled,
then shook her head.

“I’m good. Get with Admiral Welk
before you leave? The officers might want something or other. You know how that
type is. Their heads would fall off if we didn’t tighten their necks twice a
month.”

It wasn’t true. Not that she’d been
up to officer country in the last week. She hadn’t even seen any of them, to be
honest. After cleaning up the space and putting the rocket together by herself,
which Gloria observed the whole time, but didn’t comment on, since it was all
done correctly, Gwen winked at her.

“I’m on that then. I need to grab a
pad.”

She was going into the station in
her work clothing, since she hadn’t brought nicer gear for that part of things.
Then, the telesar listeners of the city wouldn’t care at all. Like radio, no
one would ever see her. Not unless they followed her to the candy shop. Gwen
wasn’t planning a return trip that week, unless someone needed more candy. The
men had gone through it like the stuff was made of sugar or something. It had
been
good
. Enough so that she could see getting addicted to it.

Gwen knew the way up top, having
been there before on previous trips. It was all the way up, which meant going forward,
up several flights of wooden stairs. The railings were all polished brass, the
work being done often enough that they gleamed, even with the bag up top
blocking most of the direct sunlight coming from the left side of the ship.
Above as well, of course. It was only about ten-thirty in the morning, which
was why she was still there at all.

The pilot house was being manned by
a familiar face, though it wasn’t Admiral Welk this time. No, it was Kelvin
Westmorland. Except of course that Kelvin was roughly in admin and not an
airship pilot that she knew of. Also, he didn’t work for Vernor Industries.
Westmorlands couldn’t really do that. Not yet. They worked for the kingdom and
king. He was dressed in the wrong uniform, given that.

When he turned to her, to see who
was there, his eyes seemed nearly empty, compared to the light and smiling man
she knew.

“Hello, Miss. Is there a problem
down below?” That was one reason she might be there. The other, more likely
one, would be getting the man coffee. Possibly a snack, but most people didn’t
do that until tea time.

“I need to go into town, back home,
for a few hours. I thought that I’d check and see if anyone needed anything?
Candy, tobacco, that kind of thing?”

“How are you going to do that? It’s
a long way to the ground.”

He sounded bland about it, instead
of either worked up, doubting or like he actually understood that she could
just go and do that kind of thing. Which he did know. He’d seen part of her
training, personally.

Which meant he wasn’t actually there.

“Teletransport. I’m Gwen. I don’t
think we’ve met?”

“Larry Sport.” He waved at the
control wheel in front of him, and nodded. “Pilot, clearly. That, or we’re all
in a lot of trouble. You can teletransport? Why are you working here?”

The words sounded baffled, as if he
honestly didn’t know. Which, she realized, might just be the truth. If he were
trained to not think of himself as being anything except the person he was
pretending to be at the moment. If that was the case, he was either
infiltrating the ship, or more likely, was going in under cover, to their
destination.

“Oh, you know, they needed the help
with loading. Everyone is leaving to join the military right now, so…” She
flipped a palm, as if it wasn’t a big deal.

Larry winced.

“I tried. Weak heart, unfortunately.
So I get to do this. It pays better, so there’s that. I could use a paper?
Almost any will do. It’s what I miss, doing this kind of work. We can get the telesar
at least. Do you have any favorite shows?”

She did, which was interesting
enough, since it was a thing to talk about from the world she was in.

“Agatha Longbranch? That probably
isn’t your speed. Anyway, I have the show before hers. Well, there’s an hour
where Brian will be on alone, but…”

Larry, the man who definitely
wasn’t a Westmorland put there to spy on someone, grinned at her.

“Ah. I get it then. Gwen Farris?
Splendid. So, not only are you a woman from another world, but you do errands,
too? I should get you to take me someplace, using your magic.” He laughed then,
shaking his head. “Sorry, that’s impossible. Even
I
know that.”

She didn’t nod, since
she
could do that very thing.

“Well, let me know? Anyway, I
should get with the Captain.” That was the Admiral. He ran the fleet, but on
the airship, he was the Captain, regardless of his rank. The trick to that was
that she didn’t know where the man was. Not that it was hard for her to find
him.

That happened when the man himself
walked through the heavy wooden door, holding a rather nice brown mug. It
smelled like coffee. That was one of the things that everyone on the ship
drank. They didn’t do tea there. The Western Kingdom loved it though. Why that
was, she didn’t get at all.

“Captain. I was just talking to
Larry. I’m going home for a bit. Into work at WGN? I can pick up some light
supplies, if it’s needed?” She was about to list things off, when the man
smiled at her.

He was nice looking. Dashing, to be
honest. In a mature way. Lean, with silver and black hair, and dapper in his
ship uniform, which was blue, and had gold on the shoulders and cuffs. It could
have been a joke, but it actually looked very tasteful.

“Gwen! That sounds interesting, to
be totally truthful. I don’t need anything at the moment. Can we send you out
for things at need? I don’t know how hard that kind of thing is to do on a body.
Can you get back? The ship is moving…”

She nodded, since it was a thing
she’d done before. A few times. It wasn’t even hard.

“Sure. I’m coming back to the
ship
,
not the space it’s in. I know it pretty well, so it isn’t that hard. Really, I
can come and go pretty easily, as long as I don’t have to carry anyone. If you
want me to do that… Well,
that
one takes a bit out of me.” It was just
the truth.

The thing there was that Kelvin
would know that and Admiral Welk might, or might not. Gwen hadn’t actually sat
down with the man for a long discussion about things. Especially in the last
few years. She’d been gone, Katherine having taken over. Then when she was back
in control, she’d kind of ignored a lot of people that might have been worried
about what had happened. Mainly due to her own personal shame on the whole
thing.

Which was probably selfish of her.
It hadn’t even occurred to her that some of them might have been feeling poorly
about the whole thing for completely different reasons. To Gwen the issue was
her failure. Always. It was hard for her to get that no one seemed to really
hold the whole thing against her, personally. No, most people seemed to blame
Katherine. Her family as well. The parents were
always
to blame in the Western
Kingdom. It was considered their responsibility to have raised their children
correctly. Even once they were adults. That probably extended to the rest of
the family as well.

Here she’d been hiding away.
Because she felt horrible about what had happened. At the same time, these
others might have been avoiding her. Not because they didn’t like her. No,
because they felt just as bad about it all as she did. Even if she didn’t see
how that could be the fact of the matter.

The whole thing baffled Gwen. The
real issue was, she kind of had to wonder if it might not be the case. That
people like Admiral Welk felt that he, somehow, had wronged
her
. Gwen
Farris. Possessing spirit from a different reality.

The man nodded at her and smiled
politely.

“Ah? Well, we can put that to use,
I wager! For the moment I’m fine. We just started the cruise, after all. I’d
heard that you were doing a program on the telesar. In fact, I heard the last
episode. That was… Very different. A bit too honest, for most.” There was no
emphasis on the words, but also no condemnation in it. The man was just giving
his opinion.

“I know. I just need for people to
see what’s actually going on. Everyone has been thinking the wrong thing about
Ethyl and Robert for far too long. If I want people to see the truth, I have to
give it to them. I’m just amazed that no one has called me on all the lies that
I told them originally. Well! I bet that will be what happens today. Still, I
can take my lumps. We’re good though? You don’t need any candy or anything? A
newspaper? I’m already running past a news stand for Larry here. He gets
whatever is new though. No specific orders, unless you want me to get it wrong.”
She grinned about the idea. After all, she doubted that she’d known where to go
for most things.

“I should be good, thank you, Gwen.
We can send a list with you later as well, if needed? We might have some things
in a few days.” Again, the words were completely bland sounding.

As if he wasn’t suggesting
something completely different than getting a candy bar, or some fudge.

“Sure? Just let me know a bit ahead
of time, so I can get them from the right place. Or… If someone needs to be
moved around? That
is
harder, but can be done. If it comes up.” Gwen had
to work not to add anything to the idea after that.

The Admiral just smiled at her,
moving with her as she went toward the door.

“I… I’ve been rather busy of late,
I fear. I should have made time to visit with you. Forgive me?” The man seemed
to mean it.

Gwen nodded.

“I was working the whole time, more
or less. For the King and Queen. Guard duty, so it wasn’t hard, but you know
about that kind of thing.” She grinned then and shared what she’d just been thinking.
“Plus, you know, I was hiding from everyone. What Kat did… I’m always amazed
that I wasn’t put to death for it. It wasn’t me, but… I don’t know. It’s so
hard to work out what to do about it.”

The Admiral just took a long, slow
breath, then made a face that looked a bit chagrinned.

“I think that many of us are in the
same basic place that way. I should have run to your side, the instant I heard
you were back. Instead I stayed away, fearing that you’d call me to the carpet
for not aiding you enough to prevent such a thing in the first place. I don’t
know what I could have managed, but it’s my responsibility to care for you.
Better than has been done.”