Read Online Captain Albion Clemens and The Future that Never Was: A Steampunk Novel! (Lands Beyond Book 1) by Kin Law - Free Book Online

Leviathan.”
                  “Ah,” Albion Clemens murmured, leaning back in his chair. “You’re barmy. The Leviathan is a myth.”
                  “Do I look like I’m mad? Would the Queen send-”
                  “An Inspector fresh from her first collar, into the breach with naught but two peashooters and a bit of British pluck? Someone who would is expected to be outlandish, by her chauvinistic colleagues? I believe so,” Clemens pointed out. “Nobody would miss her.”
                  “Why you scruffy, no-good highwayman! Let me out this instant!”
                  “Maybe when you learn to swear a little better,” he concluded, getting up to leave. “I think I’ll tap into my contacts a little, see if there’s any truth to your case. I’ll let you know what I find. Maybe someone is hiding something clever behind the Leviathan name. Could just be the item you’re looking for, but you’ve thought of that.”
                  “Harumph,” I said, spinning to leave first- only, of course, my cell was a bit impregnable at the moment.
                  “By the way,” Captain Albion called from the door, “Only the Yard teaches your gun forms. It works in the tightness of London’s streets, good for clearing corners, especially if you have a partner crouching under you. Most loners or pirates, they’ll stand with their side forward for a smaller target. It’s how I knew you were a copper.”
                  With a slam of the door, I was left to stew in my own self-pity, wondering how in the hell I managed to cock this mission up.
     
     
    4.2: To Not Getting Hanged {Blair}
     
    The air pirate emerged on deck approximately an hour after we docked the longboat with his airship.
    My fingers itched to photogram the beautiful grand dam, voluptuous and streamlined, her bow hovering gently over the quiet Atlantic. No balloon flew above, but I wasn’t informed as to how this could be- perhaps a gas envelope inside the vessel?
    I was, however, given her name: the Huckleberry , a name prairie-blown with the flavor of the West, entirely unbefitting this very Eastern fellow.
    Captain Albion Clemens, for this was how he introduced himself as he collared the wriggling barmaid with her inefficient firearm, seemed none too worried about keeping an Inspector for Scotland Yard imprisoned within his ship. I had seen one other member of the crew, a large, middle-aged fellow with considerably more belly than verbosity. He hoisted the bundle of Inspector as easily as one might a sack of potatoes. Afterward, I had been left on deck while the Captain dealt with the Inspector. I did my best to look harmless.
    “All right there, Master Blair?” Clemens said now, striding on deck in a cloud of buccaneer coat. Dark goggles now protected his eyes from the crisp Atlantic wind. With those on, he seemed much more the role of Captain. Clemens came to stand near me, peering at the starlight, though dawn lined the horizon silver. The light particularly picked out his waist, where hung a large, dinted cutlass.
    “You were welcome to come inside,” Clemens extended in friendship.
    “Ah,” I said. My voice was steady, but my hands longed to document everything. I did not know quite how to ask a notorious pirate if I would be keelhauled for it.
    What were the pirate conventions? Did they even have any? How would one be keelhauled through thin air?
    For the matter, I did not know if I would be perfectly safe otherwise, nor how long such conditions would last. I would hate to attempt the swim back to England, invisible below a veil of mist. Would I even survive the fall?
    “Do you need anything? Refreshment? Surely a Briton wouldn’t deny a spot of tea,” Clemens offered instead, extending a hand to a stair leading into the bowels of the dirigible. I nodded, having had enough of the chill deck.
    “Am I to understand you are