Brotherhood of the Strange; Episode 1 of Kingship an Odyssey in Aether: Kingship an Odyssey in Aether, #1

By Michael Richie

The Kingship, an Odyssey in Aether series follows the crew of Kingship, a steam powered aethercraft built long ago by the then benevolent Brotherhood of the Strange. Now, Captain Vance Williams and a band of war ravaged adventurers turned merchants must aid the brilliant scientist Degory Priest in tracking down a missing time machine that carries an arcane device which could doom the whole world!

 

Not familiar with Steampunk? No problem. Think H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, but dialed to an eleven! It's the romantic notion of the Victorian age melded with steam powered yet futuristic technologies. Its airship pirates by day, waistcoats, corsets, and bowler hats in London battling the supernatural by night.

 

Episodes are fast paced, with heroes you will love and villains you will hate, set in a world familiar, alien, and exhilarating all at once! 

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael Richie
• Release date: May 16, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393152170

Book preview

Chapter One

Degory Priest checked one of the two watches he carried in his black waistcoat for the third time in nearly as many minutes fumbling at the catch with a nervousness that was wholly uncharacteristic to his usual behavior. Confirming the time on one he compared it then to the other, a perfect match down to the second. The watches ticked away in synchronous order which up till recently would have been the perfect description of Degory’s life. Pocketing both timepieces he turned to view himself in the tall looking glass adorning a sturdy mahogany wall of his study. It like so much of the rest of the large room was covered in a fine layer of chalk dust, something that he would have never let occur in the past. The dusty mirror gave his appearance a ghostly and almost ethereal quality as if he were a mere shade of his true self. In some ways this was true. He was not the man he used to be, certainly not a man who wore two pocket watches, one on a gold chain and the other in clashing silver. Even allowing for such sentimentality as the silver once belonged to his father, and the gold to his mother, such a fashion faux pas was unbecoming to a gentleman of his station as was his wrinkled appearance the result of his third day in the same suit. Degory was no longer a wide-eyed young scientist excited at his membership in the Brotherhood of the Strange, thrilled at being entrusted with the hidden knowledge of the world both arcane and scientific. The world which used to be full of wonder and honor had changed and in that changing put Degory onto his self imposed, though sometimes he felt fated mission. Stresses from the past few years were taking their toll not the least of which was a speckling of gray in his otherwise jet black hair and goatee. Had he thought himself a lesser man, one willing to look the other way like so many others, he could have continued with his comfortable life inside the Brotherhood, but he knew too much now and experienced far too many things to remain silent. Always a tactful gentleman Degory prided himself on his ability to blend into whatever a social situation required of him and had used that skill to avoid rousing suspicion from the internally rotting Brotherhood for as long as he could. However events were now in motion, events holding ominous portents for the future should he fail.

Turning away from the mirror he eyed the room where he’d made so many advancements and accomplished wonders the likes of which few would ever see much less understand. There was still work to be done and a few loose ends to tie up before his plan could be put into action. If he hurried he might have time to freshen up and change. There was an internal need to look the gentleman he knew he was even if no one saw him. In fact that was the point, no one should see him if everything went to plan. Yes, Degory would make sure he left himself a few minutes to put on another suit before he left.

Degory’s study was large, and resembled more of a laboratory than a proper study common to learned persons. In addition to the myriad of books were all manner of scientific instruments and equipment. Strange contraptions lay half-built in the corners and much of the wall space was filled with chalkboards each of them covered with mathematical formulae, perplexing geometries, and notes from both successes and failures. Spanning four of the largest boards was a detailed schematic of the device, a wondrous machine only partially tested and upon which the success of his whole mad scheme depended. Of course the schematic would need to be erased, the journals to which he had committed his notes burned, and the device itself hidden, possibly destroyed, once he had completed his self imposed mission. He could not afford to let this invention fall into the hands of the faction within the Brotherhood of the Strange which had been responsible for its fall from grace, known only in whispered conversation as the Hand of Paris. The fact that Degory had designed and built this device using the nearly inexhaustible financial and material resources of that Brotherhood was an irony not lost on him.

In the center of the room lay the device itself. It was covered with a heavy canvas drop cloth in what proved to be a futile attempt to keep the sensitive equipment clean. Degory removed it, exposing his curious invention to the mid-afternoon light streaming in from the domed skylight above. Brass and crystal gleamed and reflected that sunlight from its complicated surface. It wasn’t overly large, a single seat, with a control panel consisting of levers, clockwork gears, and several spindles of numbers, all situated astride a small furnace and boiler system connected to a series of electrical condensers. This whole apparatus was framed by pylons leading to a series of nine concentric rings, the largest some four feet in diameter, diminishing in size to about a foot in diameter. Each one was capable of rotating within a larger one creating an effect not unlike an over-produced armillary. In the center of these rings a small piece of levitite was riveted and secured fast. Far too small to counter the effects of gravity such as it was used in aetherships, or one the thousands of the floating uplands filling the skies for the last century and a half. Degory used this levitite as a navigational aid as the material was prone to follow Ley Lines. These currents of mysterious energy increased the accuracy of the machine significantly after his first few test jumps, one of which had landed him miles off course deep in a heather choked swamp. Not only had the machine required a thorough disassembly and cleaning after that but Degory ruined a perfectly good and expensive pair of Italian shoes.

Brushing his hand over a decorative knob of brass, Degory bittersweetly recalled those first few attempts some months back. He’d naively kept his brother Edward current with his progress on the project and while they often bickered, his brother was every bit the scientific genius he was, and helped him get through some mathematical equations that for awhile eluded him. It had actually been Edward’s suggestion to use levitite as a navigational anchor. He also referred to Degory’s invention in the various circles of the Brotherhood of which he was a member also as the Time Machine much to Degory’s ire which is the most likely reason why Edward did it. Degory explained to him and others on multiple occasions that it was not a time machine, at least, not in the sense most people thought, H.G. Wells wrote about, or many scientists strived for. It was rather a Temporal and Spatial Displacement Accelerator; a device which could indeed travel through time and space, though in conversation Degory had shortened that simply to Temporal Accelerator. However it was quite limited by the fact it could only travel one direction, into the future. Try as he might Degory could not get the equations to work to make the device roll time backwards. It was probably just as well as this machine was already a formidable power to wield. It was a power that the scientist in Degory was in awe of but the pragmatist within equally feared as his intent had never been to build a time machine of any sort. Rather, his original purpose was to create, in effect, a near instantaneous form of transportation. Though the device was not yet perfect it did indeed work. One could sit in the Accelerator, travel one second into the future and arrive in New York having departed from London. Trial and error had shown that one second was by no means the limit of the device, and he figured he had missed about a total of nearly eight days in his experimentation. It was this very characteristic of harnessed chaos he hoped to now exploit. Degory now ruefully regretted having involved his brother in so much of the design. Though he had indeed been a help and a sounding board for his ideas of late he had grown more secretive in his own work, conferring more and more with people whom Degory knew to be more loyal to the Hand of Paris than to the Brotherhood of the Strange. It took a long while to come to terms with it but Degory was forced to admit that his own brother himself was a member of the vile Hand of Paris.

Degory stoked the coal fire in the small furnace of the Temporal Accelerator to generate enough steam pressure to turn the rings and activate the device. The built in condensers had enough of an electrical charge from the house’s steam generator for several jumps, but Degory wanted to ensure there would be sufficient power for any contingencies which might occur. As the boiler heated, Degory commenced a meticulous purging to all references to the Accelerator. His bound books and loose-leaf notes were cast into the burning fireplace which he repeatedly stirred