The Clutch (A bar for airship pirates, ragamuffins and other law breakers)

[Alexis Voltaire]

"Alright, I should be able to get there before then..." Horatio nodded, checking a small device strapped to his left wrist that might have been a watch of some sort, and was illuminated with an odd purple light.

South.. the docks were to the west and south... He thought, checking a small pocket compass that he pulled out of one of his coat pockets, he headed back the way he had come, and a few blocks later, found the street he had been searching for most of the evening. He wasn't as far away as he had thought, after all.

They came to the docks about fifteen minutes later, at the eastern section used by those unable to afford anything better. The airport security didn't often bother even patrolling this end. Passing several rundown airships in various states of disrepair, they eventually came to the right place.

"Here she is," Horatio said as the ship came into view from around an old half-dismantled and probably abandoned cargo hauler. "Not much, really, but she'll fly."

the unusual ship was designed roughly like a paddlewheel steamboat, with a rounded bow and two short angled smokestacks on either side of the raised rear deck. Where the paddlewheels would be at the rear were two three-bladed props, each five feet across and covered with a protective cage. They appeared to be mounted on a pivoting apparatus of some sort, and were folded up against the side of the ship.

the forward two-thirds of the deck was open and flat, and about five feet behind the bow was a round slightly raised guard for another prop, this one covered with a tarp. The name Wyvern was painted across the stern and below the bow in sharp black, the rest of the ship was painted a faded gray and blue.

The ship hovered, silently and without any apparent means of how it was doing so, about three feet above the ground.

"just a minute..." Horatio said, taking out a keyring and unlocking a small switch panel mounted into the hull. He turned a few switches and pulled a lever, starting up a small electric motor. A short ladder unfolded over the side, and when the motor whirred to a stop he closed and locked the panel cover again.

"Been flying alone for some time, since I lost my crew a while back." He said, in a tone that suggested he was reluctant to say more about the matter, as he started to untie the mooring lines. Coming back on deck he also uncovered the prop guard at the bow.

Once that was done, he went back to the control cabin, which was set down halfway into the deck under the raised rear section. He set the dial on the radio to the right frequency, and tapped out a short message. 'Transport Wyvern requesting takeoff clearance from E docks."

The reply came a short time later. 'Wyvern clear for takeoff.'

"Alright, we're good to go." He said watching the steam pressure rise on one of the lighted dials. The control panel in front of the wheel looked somewhat unusual, some of it was lit by the same odd purple glow that Horatio's wrist device had been, and some of the dials seemed to be blank, or painted with a weirdly reflective silver color.

"Feel free to look around below and make yourselves comfortable." He said to the others. "Just don't mess with the machinery."

A loud clanging from somewhere below made him wince as he started up the engine and engaged the props. Wish I had the money to hire a halfway-decent mechanic. He thought, and rolled his eyes. And beggars will ride...

((Hope I'm not moving ahead too fast, don't want to leave anyone out... ))

[The Corsair]

((OOC: dunno if I'm explicitly on board but I'll use the mention of 'everybody' to involve myself ))

"That was a nice lookin' cargo hauler back there. Could probably fetch a handsome sum from a trader more respectable than meself."
He looked around the interior of the beautiful machine he found himself in.
"So what kinda levitation system this runnin' off? I've seen these machines from time ta time, as you do when you fix up pirate vessels, but I don't recall seeing this kinda hover system in all me work."

[CorneliaCarton]

Cornelia had kept silent this entire time, but had followed the newcomer to his ship. Anyone whom had been in  "The Clutch" had left, so it had just been a case of grabbing her weapons, locking up, and joining the others on this grand adventure.
She took a look around the ship. She was no stranger to time traveling. She'd done it before, but she would be dammed before she'd ell anyone about that little episode.
So she just stayed silent.

[AlegrahEredschtadt]

She crossed her arms across her chest, shovel strapped to her back. She looked about, nodding slowly. "She'll do. Get us where we're goin', I'm hoping."

She began to pad around, still wary of the other members of the rag-tag party. One hand had shifted to rest against her hip, casual, but obviously upon a concealed weapon. She peered at the controls, curious but knowing better than to touch. Her nose wrinkled, mumbling, "Not a fancy person like the type it takes to run this.. more a doer than anythin'."

[The Corsair]

He didn't fail to notice the nervous shifts towards what was probably concealed weapons and hoped his own movements of precaution were less noticeable.
He moved toward the aft of the vessel where he believed the engines would most likely sit
He missed the reassuring hum of motors in action when he was on the ground and not doing mechanical work.

[AlegrahEredschtadt]

Her eyes flickered towards the other, sharp, practiced eyes noticing the movement towards a weapon. She shrugged it off, figuring they should know better than to turn on one another now. She couldn't help but announce as she looked about, hands planted upon her hips. "Isn't very cozy here, is it? Need a woman's touch, you do."

[Alexis Voltaire]

"Well, near as I can tell the ship's built on the platform of a martian glider." Horatio replied. "Gives it neutral gravity a certain distance above the ground. Apparently on Mars, a glider'll fly a good fifteen or twenty feet off the ground, but because the gravity here on Earth is stronger, about three feet is the best this'll do without power."

Turning on the signal lamps at the bow and stern, he pulled a pair of levers to the right of the wheel to the first setting, folding out the rear props to a horizontal position and engaging the drives. The three huge props hummed up to full speed and the ship started to rise, slowly at first, and then more quickly. Pulling the levers to the next position tilted the rear props to a quarter angle forward, and the ship started to accelerate forward, still rising. He leveled off and set the props to half angle, or forty-five degrees, at the bottom of the 'transport level', the altitude of airspace reserved for small traders and passenger craft.

"Yes, it is kind of a mess in here." He replied to Alegrah, glancing around at the clutter in the cabin, but keeping his eyes focused on the foggy sky outside. "Didn't think I'd be taking passengers, my normal line of work's..." He thought better of saying anything for now. "something a bit different."

It started to rain as they flew northwest, but the wind was behind them, and they were making forty-three miles an hour. Horatio leaned back in his chair with one hand one the wheel, watching the controls and correcting for the slight crossbreeze now and then. The rain drummed softly on the windows and the deck above, and they soon left the smog and smokestacks of London miles behind.

[AlegrahEredschtadt]

She nodded curtly. "If we're to be travelin' together long, I'll clean it up for you. I'm still a woman, no matter how dirty my line o' work is." She peered out the grimy windows, nodding in satisfaction and appreciation, and uttered a very, very colorful curse rarely heard within mixed company, let alone from a woman of any sort. "Now! That's how you travel! Out of London, out of the smog, out of the filth!"

[MWBailey]

Brantley admired the lines of the vessel. "a very 'Yar' kinda boat you have here," he said, "reminds me of another one, but that one had a gasbag over it. She ran on electricity generated by one o' them newfangled diesels." And she was armed to the teeth and captained by a madman if there ever was one, he grinned to himself.

[The Corsair]

"if I'm parfectly honest sir, we have on board here a barmaid if the shadiest drinking establishment his side o' the Atlantic, a time traveller, a grave robber and an explicitly under-the-radar mechanic. I didn't miss ya hesitance at the mention o' yer proffession and there's minimal point in hiding it. Not too long ago mr Brantley here was talkin' to a cigarette case, nothin's really goin' ta be shockin' us t'day"

[Alexis Voltaire]

He chuckled at what Arthur said. "Guess that's true. Well, I was a smuggler and did some work as a gunrunner, before I fell in to some bad deals back in the states. Came out here on the possibility of another job, but the man I was supposed to meet never showed."

He checked his watch again, adjusting one of the knobs on his monogoggle a few turns as he did so. "We're making good time, should be there in another hour and half."

[The Corsair]

"I guess it goes to show tha' the 'american dream' is more of a nightmare for us shadier folk."
He paused for a moment, noticing the general state of emptiness his stomach was in.
"you wouldn't happen ta' have a kitchen on board would ya? I'm feelin' a steady sense of hunger creepin' up on me."

[AlegrahEredschtadt]

She grinned lightly at Horatio. "Done a fine bit o' smugglin' and gun-tradin' since I wound up on the streets. Not all of us are so specialized. That's for the high an' mighty."

[CorneliaCarton]

Cornelia felt a sense of.... tension, aboard the ship.
They were all nervous, hands brushing against weapons, ready to draw them out at a moments notice.
Her hand too moved to the gun in the holster at her side, her sword in it's sheath on her other side next to her second gun.
Of course, a few of her weapons were concealed.
She'd been in too many fights to not carry more than three weapons.
She noted specific things on the ship. The controls. The decor. Gods, the decor was awful. Quite clear that this was the ship of a man.
And it was a mess.
"Miss Alegrah is right. This place needs a womans touch" She muttered.

[Alexis Voltaire]

"Sure, the galley's down the stairs, first left after the engine room. Help yourself to anything you find. In fact..." Horatio looked over the controls, seeing that the compass needle was steady, and the wind gauge was still. "she's running steady enough now, I could use something hot myself."

He pulled a short lever down beside the wheel to disengage manual controls, and flipped a row of switches on the upper right corner of the panel that engaged the old and occasionally malfunctioning autopilot. It wasn't reliable for long periods and wouldn't keep them from running into things, but it worked well enough to leave the wheel unattended for a few minutes.

He got up and headed down the narrow stairs at the back of the cabin to the lower deck, and through the open doorway on the left. The small galley was as much of a mess as the rest of the ship, and there was a large pile of unwashed dishes on the counter. He poured himself a cup of coffee from the pot on top of the pipe along the far wall that ran spent steam from the engine back to the condenser.

Leaving Arthur to find something to eat, he went back up to the wheel and reset the controls to manual before the autopilot took the opportunity to misbehave. He took a few sips of the bitter coffee, wondering vaguely how long it had been sitting down there.

"Well, haven't had a lot of time to clean the place up." He replied to Cornelia, looking around, a bit uneasily. He'd noticed the way most of the people here seemed to be on edge, as well. That's the last thing I need right now, another gunfight in here... He thought. As it was some of the wiring and a few of the switches on the controls still needed to be repaired from the last time that had happened.

He noticed something odd some time later as the ship was approaching Bath. At first it appeared to be slight wind disturbance in the distance, like a horizontal vortex that sometimes formed at the edges of updrafts, but on the left side of his vision it had a faint electrical-like glow. He fiddled with the knobs on the side of the goggle a moment, and it came into 'focus' through the lens as a faint but steady, roughly oval whitish-blueish-purple spot in the sky about half a mile away. "Huh. That's a new one." he muttered, setting the props back to a quarter angle.

"Is that the spot you're looking for?" He asked Brantley, pointing to the place where the clouds, lit by the thin quarter moon overhead, seemed to be curling around the strange spot...

[AlegrahEredschtadt]

She followed down to the Galley and gave a snort of disgust. "My God, you need a maid 'round here, Horatio." She wrinkled her nose and peered at the dishes. She shrugged and then headed back to the first room, leaning back against a wall. Her fingers played affectionately over her shovel as she watched with sharp eyes. She blinked and peered out towards Bath, head tilting. She grinned after a few moments. "That'd be it! She's a beauty."

[The Corsair]

He grabbed a slice of bread and dumped a bit of cheese and ham on it then went to return to the first room.
As he moved past the only door between him and his destination he remembered something horatio had said.
'first left after the engine room'
It was a frivolous detail but it meant he suddenly knew where the ship's most important device lay.

He deftly picked the lock, a trick he'd learned in a gang back in Ireland, and smoothly moved the door open.
What he found inside was by far the most fantastic sight ever to meet his eyes. It took him a shirt moment to realise that the humming behemoth before him was easily more advanced than anything else around by several decades. It was the sort of stuff that people got thrown into mental hospitals for dreaming of and left people afraid to bring to the drawing board. It would be like showing a caveman a steam compressor. Even the rivets were years away.

He just stood there and watched, knowing that nothing he ever touched in his life would measure up to this as he ran his fingers silently across the futuristicly smooth metal.
He didn't really think about how in god's name horatio had such a device on board, his mind was far too overwhelmed, but as the shock died down, his mind formed a myriad of questions that demanded answers...

[MWBailey]

"Yes, that would be it; Would you mind me attaching these cables to your ship? It'll make the passage through the vortex easier."


He pulled a set of clamps from the deep left thigh pocket of his airshipman's coat. In another time, later on and far away, they would be referred to ubiquitously as 'battery clamps,'  except that they a did not look exactly the same as those future indispensables. Each cable was configured in a 'Y' pattern; Brantley attached one of the clamps to each or two heavy brass projections on the blackbox, and one a metal part of the ship's hull (those ends of the cables were very long; there was till a copious amount of them coiled up on the deck. Brantley shoved the coils up against the bulkheads on either side.

"Allright, now try to get the ship as close as perpendicular to the apparent plane of teh vortex as possible, and ease up to it, but don't enter it 'til I give you the word."

He flipped three switches on the blackbox, opened the cigarette case to the sweeping radar-like screen, and set the cigarette case into a depression on the 'top' of the blackbox, laying the resulting conglomeration on a counter that stood against the port bulkhead. He flipped a tiny toggle lever on the case, and suddenly the entire ship was surrounded by a spherical form, like the field of 'bent' air that had been around Brantley back in the bar, but much, much larger, and only slightly visible.

"Alright...Okaaaayyyy... there you go, now, ease forward; in a moment or two it'll yank us through...


As he oversaw the entry into the portal, Brantley looked over the vessel, making sure that nothing was amiss (not that he was absolutely sure that anything would or would not be, nor that he would be able to tell the difference). He'd only ever been aboard a vessel like this one once; all the other times, he'd shot them down, or similar ones, at any rate. But he looked around anyway, for all the world as if he knew what he was doing, which he did -- but only to an extent. He was a bit suspicious, truth be told, of the vessel; it had the same lines, in a manner of speaking, as a Martian hovertank of the period in which Brantley  had first encountered (and been defeated by) the Cthuloid Martians; in fact, it looked as if someone had tried to 'humanize' that type of vehicle. Still, beggars couldn't afford to be choosers, and he'd ride a Martian Battlecruiser if that was all that was available for the mission.

But... The alterations to the hovership (tank?) made it look eerily just like the one owned by the nefarious and treacherous Dean of Paratemporal Science, of the MIT of Brantley's home dimension -- the same person who had underwritten and aided and abetted in the experiment involving the enemy's alteration of Brantley's internal organs (by replacing some of his with some of theirs). The same 'alterations' which had eventually resulted in Brantley's slow adaptation to being potentially cthuloid, having the ability to grow and reabsorb squidlike tentacles, travel through time without a protective field,  and given him other weird (martianlike) and sometimes costly powers -- such as wallwalking, which should have been a useful ability, but more often than not got him into trouble when he failed to concentrate on keeping, for example, on top of the surface of the floor, or sometimes the chair he was sitting in. Embarrassing, to say the least.

He made a note to himself to figure out where exactly this 'Horatio' had gotten this vehicle...

[Alexis Voltaire]

Horatio kept the props at quarter angle to pull up slowly to the vortex, setting them back to horizontal while Brantley attached the devices to the hull of the ship. When Brantley gave the go ahead, he used the manual tilt to slowly angle the props, using about an eighth angle to slowly creep forward.

The vortex itself, at least what he could see through his left eye, was shaped like a wide oval plate standing on edge, almost perfectly vertical to the ground. The edges of it glowed a bluish white and strange sparks of a higher level wave frequency (at this level it could no longer be called light) than he'd seen anywhere before raced around it. The center appeared to be more stable, and was a dull purple.

The sight was made slightly more disconcerting by the fact that there appeared to be nothing there at all aside from a wind and cloud vortex, and an odd black patch of sky, to his normal vision.

The ship started picking up speed smoothly and quickly as they got closer, like a piece of steel being drawn toward a magnet, and he backed off the tilt of the props to horizontal again. The bow of the ship touched the flat plane of the vortex and passed through it, although it could still be seen through the barrier, as thought it was going under dark water. Where the 'bubble' around the ship was, the frequency colors transitioned starkly from purple to black.

Looking back as the ship passed fully through was like looking at the sky from underwater, except the view appeared to be wavy around the edges and clear in the center. At first everything else around them was pitch black, but it was slowly changing...

[The Corsair]

He returned to the man deck and, though he was in a daze, felt the tense atmosphere and noticed the others all fiddling with clips
He silently followed their motions to prepare himself for whatever was about to happen. He truly had no clue about the forthcoming events as his mind was still so absorbed by the mystery of this ship he didn't even notice the vortex blaring in frot of the vessel.

as soon as we're done with whatever is happening, I'll be lookin' for answers...

[CorneliaCarton]

She shot a suspicious glare to Arthur, a look that said "I don't know what it is that you're up to, but I'll find out".
She walked back up to where the others were from the galley, having made herself a cheese sandwhich, currently eating it as she walked.
She glanced out of the window at the portal and sighed.
It was going to be a bumpy ride.
She moved from the window and sat on the floor, eating her sandwhich silently.
There was no denying that unless she was talked to or needed to make a comment about something or someone, Cornelia would remain silent. And she was damn good at it.

[The Corsair]

Despite his general lack of coherent comprehension of his surroundings he didn't fail to notice the barmaid's suspicious look. How he had warranted such suspicion he did not know, but in his daze he had no real understanding of how he appeared to be behaving in the eyes of others.

His detachment allowed him one thing. He managed to consume his entire sandwich without conscious thought.

[MWBailey]

The night sky on the other side of the portal was not black. it hasd looked so from the entry side, but once one got used to teh 'darkness,' one could see that the city of Bath that they entered was different from the one they had left, mainly in that the sky was more of a dark blue, with the dawn beginning tp make its grey-white-goldish lines in the east, illuminating the mirrored and lacily filigreed glass of teh jewel-like cathedral; the whole building was constructed ofr it, as were many of teh aircraft passing overhead...

"Oh, my," Brantley said to the ship in general, in a somewhat irritated voice, "it's one of the Pre-Martian Glassblower Dystopias..." he pulled out his Colt and checked that it was loaded, and patted his pocket where the extra cylinders were located. "These people tend to be pretty belligerent," he said warningly, "and will no doubt try to attack us--!" his words were both punctuated and interrupted by a blast from Starboard and below that rocked the ship.

"Capn Horatio?" he called, looking at the dials on the travelling apparatus, "if you would, sir, please make your best speed toward the far side of the cathedral yonder." He pointed toward the fairy-castle blown-glass cathedral that stood where their Bath's cathedral had once stood. Everybody else, prepare to repel boarders!" He shouted as a shipload of plug-uglies swung alongside(he had had to turn off the Travelling Field to conserve power), shouting curses and threats. at least they were human (or appeared to be, at least), and armed with normal thugs weapons from the earthly 19th century of the clutch's world. "Don't Let 'Em Board! They give no quarter!" he shouted, and ran forward, a long bowie knife in his left hand and his Colt into his right, and began slashing and shooting like a man possessed as the hovership zipped along over the cathedral.

A portal showed suddenly ahead, visible due to the lightnings surrounding it. Somewhat disconcertingly, the tentacle that was attached to Brantley's back grew around and snaked from under the coat, (sprouting barblike teeth of all things!) and acted almost as if of it's own volition, acting as a rearguard and preventing any enemies from getting around in back of him -- but Brantley would still have been overwhelmed in any case if not for the intervention of his shipmates.

"Head into the GAAAGH! portal yonder, and hurry, its not as stable as the last one! --Damn, Gerofff--  don't worry about the shield, if we go fast enough we won't need one for that type o' --ARRGGGGH! Portal!" he shouted as he and the others fought off their would-be captors. He unloaded the rest of the colt's cylinder into a knot of boarders who were trying to bridge the gap with their bodies, and they let go and fell toward the ground below as the two ships suddenly veered apart...

[The Corsair]

He noticed the emergence into the morning twilight of england but at the time had not the time nor will to attempt to comprehend what exactly had happened
He also noticed the warning from Brantley to prepare to fight but the exact wording was lost on him.

He used a gun of his own design and manufacture and blasted whatever came near that wasn't his 'companions', no other word seemed to fit at the time, as though he were moving in a dream. Every pull of the trigger was strictly automatic and his look was constantly distant, as though his attention was permanently fixed on something beyond his immediate foe. In reality, his attention was fixed on nothing presently visible and his eyes had little use in his trains of thought that dashed from station to station of permutations of possibilities and philosophies.

He truly had no idea what he had seen...

[Alexis Voltaire]

Horatio nodded and pulled the tilt levers as far back as he dared, angling the rear props to a little past three quarters. The Wyvern accelerated suddenly, almost leaving the boarding vessel behind for a few seconds before it matched their sudden burst of speed.

He pulled a revolver from under his coat, firing left handed while trying to maintain control of the ship. The bow stated to rise as she accelerated, and he quickly slowed the bow prop to compensate for the thrust from the rear, shooting two of the boarders coming through the side door as they tried to rush him and take over the controls.

They were losing altitude now, tilting suddenly to port as another impact from below shook the ship. He spun the wheel to correct it, and emptied the last round into one of the boarders about to shoot through the broken window at him. The boarding ship veered away suddenly as they neared the portal, and he angled the rear props to fully vertical and steered toward the lightning-edged portal. The altitude they'd lost put them at just the right height to speed through it as the ships pursuing them opened fire again...