Shadow, p.1
Shadow, page 1
part #1 of Jaegers of the Consortium Series
Shadow
A Jaegers of the Consortium Novel
By
Diesel Jester
Books to Fuel Your Fantasies
www.SteamRomance.com
Shadow:
A Jaegers of the Consortium novel
ISBN: 978-1-943544-04-2
Copyright © 2015 by Diesel Jester
All rights reserved.
Printed and bound in the United States of America.
Steam Paperback Edition: October 2015
Steam is a division of Kennebec Publishing, LLC
To my Lady Katheryne;
thanks for putting up with this insane idea of mine for all of these years.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published.
“Man is not what he thinks he is,
he is what he hides.”
André Malraux
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Epilogue
Chapter 1
In the 83rd year of the Consortium…
In the captain’s seat of Baron von Vyner’s armored zeppelin, Countess Charity Carmichael spat insults at her captor as she struggled to free herself. “The Jaegers will see you dead for this!”
The baron laughed. He was a distinguished-looking man, especially straight-backed at the zeppelin’s wheel, in front of a panoramic pane of glass. Past him, Charity could see the shorelines of Dixie give way to the Bay of Mississippi. Beyond the north end of the bay was the burnt, scorched, desert area of the wastelands; the heart of the North American continent where lawlessness reigned supreme. “I doubt that, my dear,” the baron said, turning in place. He touched one end of his moustache, adjusted the lapels of his topcoat, and looked her up and down. “We are heading deep into the wastelands. The Jaegers would be fools to follow me there.” He gestured for one of his men to take the wheel, and then walked to the back of the bridge, to the captain’s chair where the Countess was tied up.
He leaned in to caress her cheek. “As for you, you will be an underground slave, and should fetch a pretty price. Whether you’ll be mine,” he smiled, “or sold off to one of the Bandit Kings remains to be seen. It depends on how well you please me.”
Charity’s heart sank as Vyner’s smile widened to a grin. At least a slave in civilized countries knew there were rules, but being an underground, or illegal slave, and out in the wastelands? The wastelands had no rules, and slaves there were often subject to harsh, brutal, sometimes deadly treatment.
Charity shuddered and pulled away from him, but her face was hard when she spoke. “You’ll never get away with this.”
“Ooooh, my dear. My dear. I already have.”
From all around them alarms sounded. There was a plane coming in fast, the men on the bridge called out. Vyner’s head snapped around and Charity turned a sickeningly sweet smile toward him. “You were saying?”
Vyner let out a roar of frustration as he ran back to the wheel, shoving a hapless subordinate out of the way. “Where is it!?” he demanded. The question was answered moments later, when bullet holes stitched a line along the bottom of the window. A distinctive black and gray, dual-winged Bell-Carmichael Devastator swooped up a second later to pull a deft barrel roll, its rear-mounted Tesla engine screaming the entire way. Charity watched breathlessly. This was her rescue. Then the cannons of the zeppelin opened up, and flak shells began exploding all around the Jaeger’s plane as the zeppelin abruptly changed direction.
The air battle was fierce, and brief. Her rescuer was hit. His plane afire, he pulled up and put on more speed in an attempt to get above the airship. More flak shells hit, and the Devastator seemed to disintegrate. Vyner shouted, throwing his fists into the air. “Finally! Your Shadow is history,” he said, turning back toward Charity.
Then the Devastator’s cockpit canopy blew out and the Shadow rocketed out at breakneck speed in his bronze Jaeger armor. He was small at this distance; Charity could hardly see it, but he hit a large button on his harness, and bronze wings expanded from his pack and locked into place, buoying him up in the air in a fast, graceful glide, straight for the bridge. The Shadow pulled his pistol, took aim, and fired. Bolts of light hit the bridge’s window, and the glass, already weakened from the first attack, began to crack. Seconds later, still approaching, the Shadow drew his Jaeger Blade, pointed it at the glass, and used the forearm of his gun hand as a shield before he crashed through, showering the entire bridge crew in shards of glass.
Vyner had thrown himself behind the control station near Charity, and seemed unharmed. He poked his head, up and they watched together as the Shadow hit the deck, rolling swiftly to his feet as the wings folded back into his pack, his Colt model M1915 pistol, more commonly known as “the beamer,” still drawn.
With each pull of the trigger, small slivers of metal shaved off the solid block within the handle. These were fed through the capacitors, charged with energy, and ejected at high speed via the magnetized barrel. All a human eye could see was a beam of light as the electrified bullet fired, giving the weapon its name. Bridge crewmen started going down, struck by the same bolts of light that had cracked the window. Those who pulled weapons were gunned down first in a hail of light bolts, and others broke and ran.
When the bridge was otherwise clear, Shadow trained his pistol in Vyner's direction, slowly walking over the broken glass. His armor creaked with every step, and Charity could see his eyes, behind a tinted faceplate, zeroing in on the only threat that remained. “Your days of illegal slave trading are over, Vyner,” the Shadow said. His calm, commanding voice resonated through Charity; her shoulders slumped, and she felt faint with relief. He’d saved her. He’d come.
“No,” Vyner said, pulling his own weapon from a thigh holster. “No, I’m not ending my days in a cell. You’ll have to kill me first!” He emerged from cover and took aim; Charity heard two shots and saw Vyner’s body jerk.
The Shadow’s gun barrel was smoking. The Jaeger Blade, still bared and electrified from its power capacitors in the hilt, hummed with energy. “I can work with that,” he said in a hard voice. He fired two more times, hitting Vyner in the chest. When Vyner still stood, Shadow fired and kept on firing, sending light bolt after light bolt across the bridge into Vyner, who turned to walk away, his brain not yet realizing his death. Then the baron pitched over the back railing to the observation window below, where he crashed through the glass and kept going, plummeting to the earth far below.
The Shadow spun his beamer backward around his trigger finger before slipping it smoothly into its holster, and then slid his blade into the scabbard across his back. He lifted his helmet, smiling at Charity as it came off, his bright teeth a stark contrast to his dark hair. “You didn’t think that I was going to leave you alone, did you?”
“Never crossed my mind for a moment,” Charity said, smiling. Shadow popped his armored gauntlets off, then ran his bare hand up the side of her face, cupping the back of her neck to draw her close, kissing her. His tongue pushed into her mouth, and Charity hummed with pleasure. “Let me loose and I can thank you properly,” she purred.
“I dunno,” he said thoughtfully, “I kinda like you tied up like this. Makes me think of all the things I could do to you right here and now,” he said, sinking to his knees and lifting her long, flowing white skirt and petticoat up. He slid his hands up her lower legs, past her leather garters as he bared her thighs.
“You animal!” Charity laughed.
Shadow’s left eyebrow rose, “Want me to howl for you?” he asked. “Better yet, I think I want you to howl for me.” His hands slid all the way to her hips, baring her from the waist down. He slowed when his hands encountered the golden wisps of hair that covered her soft mound. “Mmm, you’re such a bad girl. Wearing no panties like this. A man could do all sorts of things… like this.” His thumb grazed across her sensitive nub.
Charity moaned as his thumb went back and forth across her clit. “I’m not complaining,” Charity sighed. “Oh, yes, right there,” she said when she felt his finger slide up into her. “Oh, please don’t stop.” His finger was now slowly, rhythmically, moving in and out of her tight velvet sheath. A minute ago, all she’d wanted was to be free; now she only wanted him, even in a place like this, surrounded by the bodies of the men he’d killed to save her lying not ten feet distant.
“You know, my dear,” he muttered as his lips kissed the top of her mound and his tongue darted out to tease her, “before we get too far into this, there is a question that I need to ask you.”
“Yessss?” Charity breathed as she writhed in the chair.
But something was wrong with the story. Shadow never asked a question at this point. He was supposed to be taking the rest of his armor off for their romantic interlude.
“Are you coming down for lunch?”
“Wh- what? He wasn’t supposed to say that. In fact, he wasn’t supposed to say anything at this point. He was supposed to be going underneath her skirts to…
Charity’s eyes snapped open, and the world around her began to twist and warp. Shadow was now standing at the end of the hallway, twisting into an image of her mother. “I said; are you coming down for lunch? You had better not be gallivanting in those copper store novels again!”
Charity let out a gasp as she came out of her daydream. Her mother drew closer. “Charity? Are you reading those terrible books again? Don’t make me come up there.”
As quickly as she could, Charity wrenched off the dream collar and shoved it underneath a pillow. The book in question soon followed. She then slid off her bed, smoothing out her skirts, and rushed to the nearby fainting couch where she grabbed a hanky and began fanning herself with it, attempting to hide her flush of arousal. “I’m sorry, mother,” Charity called back as loud as she could, masking the sound of the dream collar’s whirrs and clicks as it powered down under her pillow. “I didn’t hear you. I was up here resting a spell because I felt hot.”
The dream collar’s capacitors finally wound down with a gentle whir of air just as her mother, the Countess Hazel Carmichael, came in with a cross look on her face. The way she glanced at the bed, and then over at Charity in the fainting couch, showed she didn’t buy the story but lacked proof to the contrary. She pursed her lips and laid her fists on her hips. “You might have picked a better spot. It’s hotter than Hades today and you don’t need to be in the upper floors.” She gestured for Charity to come. “Let’s go. You need water and you need to eat.”
Charity was the last to table. Her younger sisters were already there, and even her father, Count Bertram Carmichael, was seated with the day’s paper. He stood up when the last of his ladies came in, and then sat down to resume his reading once they had taken their seats.
Charity caught the headlines of the Dixie Journal as she sat. “83rd Consortium Day Anniversary to be Best Yet.” No big surprise there. There were always huge parties celebrating the founding of the Consortium. And it was an important day. The Consortium had stabilized the economy, going back to the gold standard rather than the silly fiat notion of paper money. They’d stabilized the world, in a way, with all that awfulness that preceded them, the nations of the world at each other’s throats because of Franz Ferdinand, gunned down crossing a bridge in Sarajevo, in the former Yugoslavia. That area was part of the Russian Federation, now. Many things had changed and many things had gotten better. Even the environmental upheaval, brought about by the use of thermal weapons during the Great War, had finally settled. Places like New Eden were true paradises.
Below that headline, though, there was another: “Cheyenne Raids Dixie Coast Plantation.” Charity’s eyes widened. “Was it any of our friends, father?” she asked. Around them, small clockwork servants had begun to file in, bringing water, wine, fruit, cheeses, and sliced meats from the kitchen.
“What?” her father asked. When he saw the headline Charity was pointing to, he grumbled, but shook his head. “No, thank the Lord. But it won’t be long until she does, mark my words. That renegade wench has hit plantations and aristocracy homes along the coast from August to Montgomery, and that’s just here in Georgia. I’ve heard rumors that she’s gone as far north as Raleigh and as far west as the Mississippi Bay.”
“Bertram, put that paper away,” Charity’s mother said as she filled her plate with tiny morsels of food. “We don’t need to talk about such things at the table.”
Her father bristled. “Of course we do. Charity should know now that she’s back home, so she can keep her head down if Cheyenne and her corsairs come further inland.”
“That woman hasn’t gone more than a mile from the coast, Bertram, and we’re much too far out of her comfort zone for that. She’d have to overfly Atlanta to get to us. It would be suicide. The Air Corps would take care of her before she ever got here.”
“But we have holdings elsewhere in the country,” her father said gruffly. “The Air Corps should have taken her in by now. Really, I’m surprised the Consortium, or even Shadow himself, hasn’t brought her down already. She and her ilk are fit for nothing but the breeder farms.”
“Bertram!” Hazel said sharply. “That’s enough of such talk. I will not tolerate things like... like those places discussed here.”
“It’s not as though I haven’t heard worse at University, Mother,” Charity said, just before taking a delicate bite of cracker and cheese to hide her bluff. It was only half-true. She’d heard rumors of such places, prisons really, where women convicted of crimes were sent off in order to satisfy the whims of men, but none of her classmates—or even her professors—would go into much detail about them. Eventually, she’d stopped asking. Her younger sisters were silent around her, eating with their eyes downcast. They were listening though, Charity knew. None of them could resist a scandalous remark.
“I will not have it, young lady,” her mother said, turning on her. “Now that you are home for good, you would do well to know what constitutes proper talk at the table.”
Charity went back to her food in silence, glowering at her mother. But her eyes drifted back to the paper, to the pictures of Cheyenne’s infamous fighter plane, a crimson red Lockheed Aviation I-27 Intruder. Bell-Carmichael’s chief competitors, they were from further north in the Corporate States, just beyond the Ohio River.
If Shadow was the hero of eastern North American countries—countries that consisted of the Corporate States, the Theocracy of Dixie, the Isles of Elysium, the Latin American Alliance, and the independent Caribbean Kingdoms—then Cheyenne was his rogue female counterpart for the same region. She plagued shipping routes, hit both civilian and military airships in audacious daytime attacks, and had a hand in the fall of a few smaller governments. No one was safe.
Charity had all but drifted off, the way she did sometimes, when her mother interrupted by clearing her throat. “If you’re finished with your lunch, Charity, please go upstairs and make yourself presentable. We will be meeting with the wedding planner this afternoon.”
Charity groaned. “Mother, I’ve told you a hundred times that I don’t want to get married.”
“Nonsense. Every girl your age wants to get married. Quickly, so they don’t have to deal with the uncertainty of a public season. Other girls would kill not to have to deal with the uncertainty. This way is by far preferable.”
“Fine, I just don’t want to get married to him,” Charity snapped.
“Him” referred to the Baron Edward Spence the Third, or Eddie, as everyone called him. Everyone Charity met gushed about how lucky she was, but Charity knew better. She knew Eddie in private, behind closed doors; he wasn’t the man everyone thought he was. He should have worn a moustache, like Baron von Vyner.
What she wouldn’t give to have Shadow to swoop in and rescue her.
Was she making the biggest mistake of her life, going along with this? She’d counted herself lucky to have had the opportunity to study abroad, but now that it was over, reality was rearing its ugly head. And when the wedding planner finally got there, she ignored Charity completely. She droned on and on about the recent advances in clockwork servants, the advantages to having streamers suspended by poles, and hiding reticulated awnings that could be released at the pull of a lever. Then she pushed them to rent one of her company’s small luxury airships to whisk her and her groom off to their honeymoon on the banks of the Mississippi Bay.
Charity’s mother, on the other hand, hung on the planner’s every word, even adding suggestions of her own, over Charity’s objections. Charity groaned, dropping her face into her lace-gloved hands. If she had to go through with this, she wanted to make the best of it. Yet she couldn’t get a word in edgewise.
Her parents had given her the news the moment she returned from graduation: she was to be married to a prominent Baron of the Spence family at the end of the year. No season, no courting, nothing; just a quiet arrangement that would be announced to all of Atlanta, and by proxy all of the Theocracy of Dixie, at the Gala in August. Plans had been put into place during her last year, without her knowledge or consent. But her consent wasn’t needed, her parents explained. What was the point? The Spences had been around nearly as long as the Carmichaels. They were a good, God-fearing, old-money family with deep roots in the community. Charity could hardly do better, and should count herself lucky.
