Free Short Story: Lending a Hand (Steampunk, The Gate Jumper series)

Free Short Story, Steampunk Fiction, 4,600 words, approx 18 minute read.

“Did you notice the look on the captain’s face just now?” Helen asked her sister. “He seemed to be in a state of major distress.”

Selene was two years older but ten years meaner. She adjusted the lace above her black corset and let out a little huff. “The captain appears to be mid-forties, overweight, and barely sober. Helen, I do not notice men like that.”

You noticed him enough to come to those conclusions, she thought, but held her tongue. Helen had more luck arguing with steam engines than she did her sister. At least those things she could take a part and understand how they worked.

But she knew what she saw. The airship captain had been sweating bullets. They were about a thousand feet up with six hundred souls aboard.

“I need to go below,” she said, turning that direction.

Selene grabbed her arm. “No, you do not; you’re the reason we came on this cruise and you will not spend it in your room reading books. How about that fellow over there?” Selene indicated a tall yet lanky individual with a black bowler hat and black suit, wearing a red vest over a white button up shirt.

“That one? He looks alright, but I do not think I am interested.”

“Helen dear, you are such a harsh judge, you haven’t even spoken to him!”

“A moment ago you said you ‘do not notice men’ like the captain. How am I any different?” Selene crossed her arms.“ And how does Jacque feel about you noticing other men? Doesn’t that upset him?”

“My dear, just because you look at a dress, doesn’t mean you have to buy it. Why, you could even try it on for an evening, and no one outside of this cruise would know.”

Helen yanked her arm away. “I don’t know why you and mother are pushing me so much to get married when you clearly don’t care for it!”

Selene gasped, a hand rising to her pearl necklace. “You little urchin!”

“Tramp!” she fired back, and used Selene’s stunned silence as an opening to retreat below deck. On her way, she took one look past the railing of the massive airship. They were flying over a mountain range near the middle of the country, the peaks topped with snow even in the late spring. A thick blanket of aspens and pines ran through the valleys below. It was beautiful, but also deadly if they needed an emergency landing.

She felt bad telling off her sister like that. Selene married pretty young, and maybe the pressure she put on Helen was the same pressure mother had put on both of them. Does she feel trapped? Like a man stuck on a runaway train? She had not considered that before. Perhaps she shouldn’t have called Selene a tramp.

She kept thinking on it, but decided to apologize later. If her hunch was correct, she would need tools. She stopped by her room, which wasn’t much different than the room in the average hotel. There, she had stashed her small travel size tool kit away, a leather-bound box with brass hinges. She considered changing out of her skirt—the corset was fine as is—but the look on the captain’s face had worried her. She left her room in her same clothes and continued further in to the belly of the ship.

She knew this particular airship model pretty well, likely being the only woman subscribed to the Mechanic’s Quarterly periodical. It was the mighty Gilded Whisp, made by Beaux and Sons nearly a decade ago. Regular maintenance would ensure that the airship would be airworthy for years and years more. But when they boarded four days ago and she saw the captain and the crew lined up to welcome the passengers, her stomach turned much the way it was turning now. The ragtag band with scuffed shoes, patchy overalls a size too large or too small, and unkept hair didn’t inspire confidence.

She quietly gasped as her white skirt caught on a screw that had worked its way halfway free on the second set of stairs. The rip that accompanied it sounded bad, and she was probably now too improperly dressed to be seen in public. She thought her underclothes weren’t much more immodest than what some of the mechanics stripped down to on a hot day, so she continued on.

She arrived at a ship’s ladder and listened. The mechanicals were definitely below. In spite of her thoughts regarding her underclothes, habit dictated that she check to make sure no one was directly below to look up her skirt, then she descended. She heard the captain cursing up a storm, language that her sister would probably pretend to be incensed by, if she heard it.

At the bottom, she was surrounded by magnificent brass pipes crawling all over to feed the massive propellers, and in the middle of the room, a mighty boiler that feasted on coal. It was a giant thing, large enough to feed steam to a dozen engines, one for each propeller. The cherry timbers that made up the hull of the ship were soot stained and scratched, but to Helen, they were as beautiful as everything else.

The Gilded Whisp could run on only ten propellers in an emergency, and they all seemed to be firing at full throttle, so that wasn’t the cause of the captain’s concern. If the airballoon had sprung a leak, then the captain would be on the top deck, not down here with the machines. So, what’s the problem?

But then her ears focused on a sound she had not yet distinguished from the firing of the pistons. A loud, metallic rattling. She lifted her skirt up just enough to break into a jog, both the rattling and the captain’s cursing growing louder as she approached.

And there it was, the main boiler, solid brass, ten feet tall, and shaking like a three-day sober drunk.

“What the helt?” she shouted. The captain and two crewmembers turned on her.
“My lady,” the captain said. “What are you doing here? This is no place for a woman.”

“It’s rattling so loudly,” she said.

The two crew members chuckled at her simple observation, unaware of the danger they were staring down.

“My lady, please, kindly return to the deck while my boys and I take care of—”

“It’s overpressured,” she said, pulling out a pair of goggles from her toolkit. They were leather with glass lenses that had a fog resistant coating she had invented herself, and a separate set of magnifying lenses she could drop in front if needed. She put her brown leather gloves on, then ripped off the rest of her skirt so it wouldn’t catch fire brushing up against hot metal. Her underclothes went down just above her knee, but they were underclothes. The three men goggled at her while she slipped between them, blushing. “Looks like a size seven, could you pass me one?” she asked.

The captain mouthed a few words before obeying and handing her the wrench. She set it on the pressure relief valve and gave it a push, but it didn’t budge.

“What the helt? It’s stuck! Did you run proper maintenance before disembarking?”

“We run all proper maintenance, my lady.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. If you had been running proper maintenance, this shouldn’t be an issue.”

She looked up, and saw the two crewmen were more interested in her state of undress than her. She blushed again, insisting to herself that she was still well covered. “Can you help push this?”

The two crewmen jumped in, but still the valve didn’t budge. She waved them off, then put down the magnifying lenses on her goggles. The surface corrosion was bad, but under magnification, she saw was how bad it really was.

“This is not good. Captain, this valve is about to burst, and if it does, we all go down in the mountains. I have a feeling there is no suitable lifeboat ready to go?”

The Captain’s suddenly pale face confirmed her assumptions. “Mamm, I…”

“Is there a secondary pressure relief valve?”

“Yea, but it stuck like a fat man in a bog,” one of the crew said in a bit of a southern drawl. “Didn’t think we needed it if this’un worked.”

“I believe that is the entire point of a backup. Let me think.” She looked the boiler up and down. At any moment it could blow and kill all of them, and they would be the lucky ones if that happened. Quick and painless.

“Mamm, I—” the other crewman started, but Helen waved off his comment with her hand.

“This ship can run with only ten engines. I would hate to do this to such a magnificent creature, but we could put a hole in one of the pistons and it would ease up on the pressure without losing all of it. If that propeller stopped working, we would still have plenty of power left.”

“And how do you suppose we do that?” The captain asked.

She eyed his revolver.

“Now hold on, mamm—”

“It’s Ms. Kohl. I’m sorry captain, but I don’t see any other way fast enough to save our lives and the lives of those aboard.”

The captain paused, then handed over the revolver. “Fine, you do it.”

She looked at him, then at the revolver.

“You know how to use one, don’t you?”

“I…Yes, but it has been a little while.” She gently took the revolver, opening the cylinder to make sure it was loaded. She snapped it back into place then looked up at the pipes going to the propellers. Any one of the pistons would do, but she settled on one near the ladder down as it had a little more room around the pipe work and it would be easier to get to.

Before climbing the tiny maintenance ladder, she checked the valve for the individual engine pipe. She wanted to make sure it worked in case she caused a little too much damage, and they needed more pressure again. They could essentially control the pressure with that valve alone. It didn’t look like it was in the best shape, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as the valves on the boiler. She didn’t dare test it by closing it—adding more pressure to the system even for a second could cause the boiler to explode.

She climbed up the maintenance ladder near the engine, mumbling a curse as she noticed how difficult the pipe was to access. Beaux and Sons were notorious for making airships that were hard to work on so they could make money on repairs, or at least that’s how most mechanics saw it.

She held on to the ladder with one hand, then took careful aim. “I’m sorry, you are a wonderful machine,” she said, then squeezed the trigger.

The bullet ricocheted. Helen yelped and pulled her arm back and the crew ducked for cover, but the small hole in hull showed that it didn’t bounce anywhere dangerous.

“Mamm, that’s enough! Get down from there!” the captain bellowed.

“I um…” she said, unsure of herself. “I believe we die if I don’t do this.” She flipped the magnification of her googles back on to examine the pipe. She had definitely weakened it with the first shot. She just had to shoot one more time in the exact same spot. She extended her body outward, hanging onto the ladder with just one hand and one foot on the rung. “Just one more. We can get you patched up at the landing, I promise.” She aimed point blank at the dent in the brass, and fired again.

Then, she screamed.

It had worked, all too well. The blast of pressurized steam from the pipe melted the revolver and most of her arm. She tumbled down the ladder, landing hard her chest, her scream cut off as the wind was knocked out of her.

“It’s workin!” one of the crew members shouted. Only the captain noticed what happened, and he cursed wildly at his crew to go fetch a doctor. Then he knelt down next to Helen.

“Got damt it all to helt, Mamm. Your hand is clear blown off.”

Tears streamed down her face, her mouth still open in a breathless scream. I’m such an idiot. I should have known that would happen.

“That was stupid! I shouldn’t’ve let you done that. I should have done it, I’m the got damt captain!”

“Where is she?” another man’s voice sounded.

“Right here!” the captain shouted back. In a moment, the lanky man Helen had commented on was in her view. He had a briefcase with him and set it down before opening it. “Hurry it up, man!” the captain said.

The doctor did a quick examination before announcing, “I’m going to dose her with ether. The shock will kill her quicker than anything if I don’t.”

Helen wanted to protest, convinced that if he dosed her, she would never wake up. She shook her head and tried to scream “no!” but the breath would not come to her. The doctor poured out the ether into a sponge, then pressed it to her nose and mouth. She held her breath, but her body took over when her desperate lungs craved air, and she inhaled. The last thing she heard was her sister, calling out her name, then a moment later, screaming.

Airship Heroine, the newspaper headline was bold, the words two inches tall on the page. That was her. Helen Kohl, the now one-handed cruise ship savior. Well, one and a half hands. She had spent her savings on a very advanced prosthetic. She moved her mechanical hand to adjust the paper, the quiet ratcheting of small gears accompanying her gentle movements. It took a lot of getting used to, but she was better with it already.

She sat in a red upholstered, high-backed chair in her mother’s parlor, while her mother and sister argued loudly about how they would find “a decent man now for their invalid daughter,” and “how will she ever make the Jump if she’s a spinster?”

She lifted the paper to hide her tears. She had risked her life to save everyone on that ship, but still her mother and sister couldn’t see her as anything more than a tool for bringing more wealth and connections to the Kohl family. If she were a man, she would be almost guaranteed a Jump for her bravery. But a woman machinist saving the day? It would sell newspapers but only out of curiosity. She tried to tell herself she didn’t care about the Jump, that most people didn’t get Voted to go to paradise. But her soul was not convinced.

“At least she has no excuse now—she will have to sell the practice,” her mother declared to Selene.

Helen tried to convince herself it was the wine talking, not her mother, but still more tears came. Her mother was right. Up until now, Helen had been a surgeon.

Her practice was thriving, and she already had large offers of money to buy her out. She would have to accept before too much time passed and she would be forced to close her doors anyway. But she had been taking her time, trying to learn the new prosthetic in case it was good enough. She already knew it wasn’t.

A few minutes later, her sister appeared at the arched doorway to the parlor. “You have a gentleman caller, Helen.”

Helen hid her face with the paper long enough to pull out a small white handkerchief and wipe the tears from her eyes. She expected this would be another man coming to make an offer on the practice, but when a tall black gentleman strode into the parlor, Helen noticed that his hands were calloused and rough, and his suit was white—a very unusual style.

The man removed his white top hat and gave a short bow to her sister. “Thank you, Mrs. Strafford. May we have a moment of privacy while we talk business?”

Selene smiled and nodded, eyeing him up and down one more time before leaving and closing the door behind her. She gave a lot of men that look. Helen wondered why.

“Ms. Kohl, I came to give you my condolences,” he said, but his eyes kept sneaking glances at her mechanical hand. He was clearly uncomfortable with it.

“I don’t know who you are,” she said in a terse voice. “So, I don’t need condolences from you.”

He gave her a sly smile. “My apologies. That is not the nature of my visit, but I didn’t want to appear rude. I actually have a business proposition for you.”

Her eyes returned to the newspaper. “Yes yes, you want to buy the practice. How much are you offering?”

“I think there is a bit of a misunderstanding. I am from the southwest, a gold rush town: Salvation Springs. Have you heard of it?”

She lowered the paper. The west. She hadn’t heard of Salvation Springs, but supposedly the west was full of boom-and-bust gold towns. It sounded like a horrible life to her family, but Helen was always intrigued by the thought of adventure. Everything in Fortishire was already established, divvied up amongst the wealthy who fought each other for another small piece of the pie.

But the west was still developing. Nothing was set in stone there.

“I’ve heard stories,” she told Mr. Jones.

“Well, the stories are true. Salvation Springs is a thriving city, a jewel in the desert. Autocarriages are popular there; I build them for many wealthy men who prefer them over the stink and care of horses. Not to mention that anyone who is anyone out there has an autocarriage. It is a statement of wealth and luxury.”

Autocarriages. There was a thought! But Helen didn’t like the way he looked at her arm, and the pain was flaring again. She would have to dose herself again soon.

“What is your point, Mr. Jones?”

“My point is that I came out here looking for more clients, but I can see the autocarriage trend has not quite made it this far east.”

Helen knew why. The trainyard owners and the airship barons had fought to keep autocarriages out of their city. Three years ago, a man tried to build an autocarriage factory, and it burned to the ground the day before it opened.

“During my time here, I have found a woman I intend to marry,” Mr. Jones continued. “Her and her family require that I move here, so I am looking to sell my business.”

She lowered her newspaper to her lap. “And you said it is an autocarriage factory?” This Mr. Jones looked like he had a lot of secrets, but the idea was intriguing. “And what makes you think I would buy it?”

“I read the newspaper this morning. They interviewed the captain on that airship, and he said you had a mechanical mind. I know it probably seems like I am jumping to conclusions, but I knew I just had to meet you, Ms. Kohl. And I thought if I went through the trouble, I would see if you were interested in buying my business.”

She slowed her breathing down, just a little, enough so that he wouldn’t notice she was intrigued. She wasn’t the best with people, but she knew to keep calm during negotiations.

“And what price were you looking to get for it?” she said, carefully avoiding any indication that she would be the one to give him that price.

“Ten thousand dollars.”

“Thank you but that is too much. Have a nice day.” She lifted the newspaper up to her eyes.

“Ms. Kohl, I know that’s a lot. But you get the factory, my home there in Salvation Springs, the workshop on that land, and all the parts and pieces I have left for building autocarriages.”

She set the paper aside on an end table this time. “Do you have any photographs of this home? This factory?”

“I’m afraid not. I wasn’t expecting to sell everything when I came out here, or I would have come more prepared. But I do have my ledger with me, and you would obtain my client list as well as information all of my interested buyers.”

“Well then, I expect you to leave that with me and give me some time to make copies, and also time to send letters to Salvation Springs to confirm everything you’re saying and request photographs.”

“I must apologize again, Ms. Kohl, but I have other buyers who are interested and are willing to…move quicker than that.”

“Those who move quickly usually offer much less,” she said.

“Also, my client and leads list is private,” Mr. Jones continued, ignoring her comment. “That can go only to the new owner. Certainly you understand that wealthy buyers appreciate their personal information being protected.”

Helen considered that. This whole deal was looking shady, but the idea of running a factory, surrounded by machines that were hers…it was thrilling. And it would get her away from her family. They kept a tight grasp on her life, tighter now that she was missing an arm. But all the way out in Salvation Springs, that tight grasp would vanish. She unconsciously itched at what remained of her arm, down near where her elbow had been, and caught Mr. Jones raising a handkerchief to his face to hide his disgust.

“Five thousand, and you must sign over everything in the presence of my lawyer, and I will need a week to get the assets together.”

“Nine-thousand, and you have a deal.”

She sighed. “Mr. Jones, you are not making this easy.”

He chuckled. “My intended has said the same thing more than once. I’m a hard man, Ms. Kohl. It takes a hard man to run a factory. I’m beginning to think you might not be ready for that.”

Her brow furrowed. “Are you trying to play on my emotions? I do not appreciate that, Mr. Jones. That is not gentlemanly of you.”

Mr. Jones held up both hands in mock defensiveness. “Easy there! I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“Six thousand would let me know you really didn’t mean anything by it.”

The door to the parlor opened, Helen’s mother stomping in. “What’s going on in here?” She always had to make an appearance, and had changed out of her plain yellow dress she had on earlier in the morning and into a pretty, floral patterned, blue dress with a pearl necklace and large brown sunhat.

Either that, or she spilled wine and needed to change anyway.

“This must be Mrs. Kohl,” Mr. Jones rose and took her hand to give it a kiss. “A pleasure, Mrs. Kohl.”

“We will see, Mr. Jones. I can already tell you Helen’s practice is worth far more than you are offering.”

“Mother!” Helen warned. She had misunderstood what was happening, and now told Mr. Jones that she had money, a lot of money, in assets.

Mr. Jones quickly hid the smile that almost came across his lips. “Mrs. Kohl, I think you misunderstand. I am not here looking to buy anything; I came here offering your daughter a deal.”

“What kind of deal? If you’re not here to make an offer—either in marriage or as a buyer—then I ask you to leave!”

“Mother, this conversation is between Mr. Jones and I, and you need to leave right this instant.” Her mother gasped, clutching her pearls. Now I know where Selene learned that.

“Helen, I am your mother! You cannot order me around like that.”

“Eight-thousand, Mr. Jones. That is my final offer.”

“That’s way too low!” her mother complained, but Mr. Jones held out his hand to secure the deal. He hesitated when he realized he held out the wrong hand, and was about to pull it back. But Helen snatched it with her mechanical prosthetic and gave him a handshake so firm she got him to wince.

“You, Ms. Kohl, have a deal,” he reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. “This is where you can reach me when it’s time to sign the papers. If I don’t hear from you by the end of the week, I will find another buyer.” He passed her the paper, then returned his top hat to his head. “Pleasure doing business with you.”

Helen’s mother was stunned, jaw dropped open as she turned to watch Mr. Jones leave. “What on earth was that?! How dare you sell your practice for so little!”

“I didn’t sell the practice, mother,” Helen said with thin patience. “I purchased an autocarriage factory, out west.”

Her mother was gob smacked.

Selene came in to see what was going on. “Mother, you look pale!”

“I feel faint,” she said, stumbling over to the couch and collapsing into it.

“Helen! What is this about! You’re going to send mother into an early grave!”

“I highly doubt mother would let herself die. I believe that she wants to make the Jump in a couple of years so she can show me what I will never have.”

It was Selene’s turn to clutch her pearls. Everyone knew that everyone else wanted to make the Jump, but to talk about it so openly was worse than talking about relations. “I can’t believe you!” she shouted.

“You do not need to,” Helen said as she reached over for the telephone and dialed. “Hello, operator? Put me through to Mr. Stein’s office.”

“Dr. Stein?” her sister said. “You’re selling the practice!”

“Yes, and buying an autocarriage factory in Salvation Springs.”

Her mother gripped at her chest. “Say it isn’t so, Helen! This is madness!”

“Yes, sister, stop what you are doing right now!”

“You’re the ones who have been pushing me to sell the—yes, is this Dr. Stein’s office?” her tone changed when the secretary answered. “Please put me through to the doctor, tell him it’s Helen Kohl and I am calling regarding the sale of my practice.”

For once, her mother and sister kept quiet, no doubt waiting to argue further about the factory. But they wouldn’t dare interrupt her while she was doing what they wanted.

The phone call lasted for just a few minutes. Helen barely took the time to exchange pleasantries, and within moments, the sale was made, to be finalized the same day at the same office she would finalize her purchase of the factory. That would make it easier to avoid her family interfering, she could do both in the same meeting and they wouldn’t be able to stop her. Of course, only she knew that little detail.

When she hung up, her mother seemed to have recovered from her “fainting spell” enough to sit upright. “I am proud you have come to your senses regarding the practice, Helen. But we must discuss this matter of Salvation Springs and this…autocarriage factory.”

“There is nothing more to discuss.”

Her mother and Selene looked at each other with a steely gaze.

“If there is no discussion, then there is no room for you in my home either,” her mother announced, like the stage actor she was when she was younger. “I will have Mira pack your things immediately!”

They both looked at her, expecting a reaction. But she calmed herself and picked up the newspaper again. “Tell Mira to pack them for the journey to Salvation Springs. I will take the train this Saturday.”

For the first time in her life, Helen had her family at a loss for words. They left her in the parlor with nothing more than a few sharp glances. She grinned, pretending to read the paper but daydreaming about her new venture. Her life was not over.

And maybe, just maybe, she could even make the Jump one day.

“Salvation Springs, here I come!”

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