Wreathed in Steam

By Dawn Vogel

Clockworks, airships, and more! Wreathed in Steam contains stories and poetry in the steampunk and gaslamp fantasy realms, with clever mechanisms and daring characters. Be astonished and amazed by heroics, fast thinking, and innovation!

• Language: English
• Publisher: DefCon One Publishing
• Release date: Jun 13, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215496008

Dawn Vogel

Dawn Vogel has been published as a short fiction author and an editor of both fiction and non-fiction. Her academic background is in history, so it’s not surprising that much of her fiction is set in earlier times. By day, she edits reports for historians and archaeologists. In her alleged spare time, she runs a craft business, helps edit Mad Scientist Journal, and tries to find time for writing. She lives in Seattle with her awesome husband (and fellow author), Jeremy Zimmerman, and their herd of cats.

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Wreathed in Steam

Dawn Vogel

Don't Count Your Sprite Shards Before They're Caged and Twelve Essential Things Found in Commander Scarlett Archer's Spacesuit Pockets (And Some Which Were Not) are copyright 2022.

All other pieces are copyright 2023.

All rights reserved.

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Table of Contents

Don't Count Your Sprite Shards Before They're Caged

Leaders and Followers

Clockwork

The Steamer Trunk

My Josephine

Paint Pots

Intertwined

Re

The Last Days of the Ghost Shipwrights

Bloodied Thrice

Roadside Assistance

Trinkets or Treasures

The Old Man in the Mountain

Zebra, in Clockwork

Fast Fashion (Rimas Dissolutas)

Twelve Essential Things Found in Commander Scarlett Archer's Spacesuit Pockets (And Some Which Were Not)

Good Fortune

About the Author

Don't Count Your Sprite Shards Before They're Caged

Baleful red light crackled across the sky, outlining a mushroom cap atop tentacles, stretching down into the clouds. Conditions were perfect for the abominably misnamed sprite to discharge the shards that powered the airship Jubilee on long-range journeys.

You saw where it struck? Tali asked.

Her pilot, Rowan, rolled their eyes. Yes, Captain.

Tali nodded. I'll prep the divers.

Below decks, the clouddiving team waited in rubberized suits, anti-static cage-like enclosures at the ready. An air of excitement and nervousness surrounded them--for most, this was their first clouddive. For the handful of veterans on the team, it might have been their second or third. Clouddiving wasn't a profession for the risk averse.

Tali had never clouddove herself, but she'd commanded plenty of teams. Two-minute dives, max. Find the shards, get back to the ship. If you hear the return call before two minutes are up, come straight back. Do not delay.

A dozen heads nodded, and Tali stepped back as the hold crew opened the bay doors. She watched each clouddiver check their tether, then double-check another's. They operated as a well-oiled machine.

Captain? a tremulous voice called. Boutros, the atmosnavigator.

Tali hurried away from the clouddivers, hoping their suits muffled Boutros's wavering tone, the one he used when things were dire.

What? she hissed when she reached his station, a mess of wires, blinking lights, and beeping.

Conditions suggest we're going to have more strikes.

Here? Tali asked. The atmospheric conditions that created sprites and their shards were rare. That she'd seen fifteen now, and survived, was a miracle.

Boutros nodded. That last discharge was maybe a tenth of what the big one's got built up.

How soon?

Minutes? Maybe? Boutros shrugged. I won't know until right before it hits. We're sitting ducks, Captain.

Tali ran the numbers. If the dozen clouddivers each brought back a single shard, the trip wouldn't be a waste. They could make a dozen long-range trips with twelve shards.

If they backed off now, there might be more shards to collect from a second strike. Or there might not. There was still so much they didn't know.

On the flipside, if a second strike hit before the clouddivers returned, not everyone would make it back. And depending on the strike's position, they could lose the whole damn Jubilee.

She didn't have time to ponder it.

We don't get anywhere by hedging our bets, Boutros, she said. Tell Rowan we might have to get out fast. But we've got to let the divers have their two minutes.

Boutros opened his mouth to protest, but no sound emerged. Instead, he nodded, though the worry that had been in his voice before now glowed from his eyes.

Tali hurried back to the hold. A dozen lines lay taut across the floor, all dropping off at the yawning portal open to the darkly clouded sky around the airship. She scanned the hold crew's faces. Report.

Fifty-seven seconds remaining.

Tali paced, lingering each time she reached the comms panel. Boutros and Rowan had all the information necessary. Tali trusted them to do their jobs.

She couldn't trust the storm.

Around her, the air crackled. The fine hairs on her forearms rose. Did the hold always feel like this when it was open to the elements?

She hesitated longer near the comms panel.

When the high-pitched chirping whistle that signified thirty seconds sounded, she jumped. The tethers across the floor