Amazon Airship Pirates Pt. 04

Charles Dartington and the Amazon Airship Pirates (part IV)

Epilogue: Returns and Decisions

Three days later, Charles Dartington awoke, naked, in an unfamiliar bed, although still in the pirate village. His head throbbed and felt heavy and his memories felt uncertain, but as his eyes came into focus, he realised that he was looking at a shapely leg near to himself. For a moment, he admired it, until his brain gradually registered the amount of wiry hair growing on it, and his eyes, sweeping along its length, came to a substantial cock and pair of balls.

Charles twitched and swallowed on a dry throat, trying to remember what had happened the night before. Then he began trying slowly to remove himself from the bed.

"Good morning. You are awake, I see?"

The voice came from behind Charles, and was quiet, educated, and feminine in tone. Charles looked around to see that the speaker was an Indian woman of perhaps forty, clad in a loose cotton robe. Her long hair was swept back, and her face, while sternly handsome, was notable mostly for a heavy scar on her right cheek, aligned with a smaller nick in her right eyebrow. A downward blade stroke had evidently once laid her face open, and the damage, although healed, was still visible. The woman was sitting on a lightweight chair, looking at Charles with amusement.

"Good morning," Charles replied carefully. "What... What happened to me last night?"

"You let yourself fall to drinking with a band of pirates," the woman said. "Which is highly unwise for a young man of your inexperience. Then you came to this room, undressed, and fell asleep."

"I am... I'm sorry," said Charles.

"So you should be. Luke there had to do double duty."

"Double duty?" For a moment, Charles was worried again, but then he raised his head enough to see another pirate woman, a Malay of around the same age as the first, sleeping on the other side of Luke, one arm thrown across his chest.

"Here. Drink this." The Indian woman stepped over to the bed while offering a large cup, which Charles instinctively accepted. It proved to contain sweet water, doubtless from the island's good clear spring. "Strong drink robs a man of moisture. You should replenish yourself."

"Thank you," Charles said.

"It was nothing," the woman said, idly running a sharp-nailed finger down his chest as if examining a piece of furniture. Then her touch continued to his waist, where she paused. "And you are recovering already, I see," she observed, still in a quiet, neutral tone.

"I am sorry," said Charles, blushing over his whole body.

"Do not be. You can make recompense for our disappointment of last night." The woman stood up and dropped her robe to the floor, revealing a rangy, muscled body. Her breasts were small and unremarkable, but her nipples were large and dark; her pubic hair was thick and jet black. Then she climbed onto the bed, put one leg over Charles (placing her foot near Luke's face), and grasped Charles's growing erection. "Do you know, you became thus as you slept? It was quite pleasing to observe." She moved her hand up and down twice, and then reached to a bedside table for a condom.

"Thank... Thank you," said Charles, unsure what else to say as she applied it.

"My pleasure, Mr. Dartington," said the woman in a mocking tone of formality, before aligning herself and sinking carefully onto Charles. She paused for a moment while he drew breath, and then began to move slightly back and forward.

Charles felt himself growing even harder and more eager inside her, and hastily sought some mental distraction to avoid prematurity. He had the sense that the tolerance extended to his inexperience by amazon lovers might not endure much longer.

He stared at the ceiling for a moment, his mind skimming over countless topics, and then looked around, finding that Luke was now coming awake. The other man saw what was happening beside him, smiled amiably, and absently reached down and ran a fingertip along the length of his own cock. That rapidly grew hard, and Charles felt a moment of pride that his own erotic performance might be a subject of admiration for an older and more experienced man. Then, it occurred to him that this might be something which he could contemplate that would distract him adequately from pleasures that were too much to his taste. So he locked his gaze on Luke's growing erection.

However, he realised after a moment that this was not working - that his own loins were growing dangerously eager even with this sight in his view. Hastily putting aside concerns about what this might indicate about himself, he turned his gaze back to the ceiling, and tried to concentrate on his father's descriptions of the crankshaft design of a sextuple-expansion steam engine. This was more successful, even though the woman atop him was now clenching her secret muscles on his cock, and both she and he were panting for breath.

To Charles's relief, the woman gave a sudden cry of "Hey-yah!" and stopped moving, grinning broadly. He reached up and gently fondled her nipples, holding them between finger and thumb, and let lust surge through him once more. Then, he deliberately paused for a moment, lowering his hips slightly against the mattress, before he thrust up into her with all his strength, once, twice, and three times, releasing all the contents of his loins into the condom with a soft moan.

The woman collapsed onto him with a smile, and Charles enjoyed the feeling of her breasts against his chest. Looking over her shoulder, he saw that the other woman had been woken by all the activity, and was reaching out to rummage on the bedside table. A moment later, she turned back with a condom, which she handed to Luke, who began to roll it onto his own erection.

"I really am very sorry," Charles said to his partner, "but I do not recall your name."

The woman smiled. "Tarani" she said, as Charles softened while still inside her.

Meanwhile, the other woman had rolled onto her back and drawn her knees up almost to her full breasts, opening her loins to easy view. Charles's vision of them was immediately obstructed by Luke, however, as the other man placed himself to enter her, positioning his erection with what seemed to be instinctive ease, and then thrust in deep and hard. The woman moaned happily, and Luke began a vigorous thrusting that made the whole bed shake. Charles shook his head to clear it, and when Tarani climbed off the bed and started gathering up her robe, he followed her, looking round to see his clothes strewn across the floor. Tarani smiled at his expression, and when he bent down to gather up his shirt, she slapped his buttocks lightly.

Suddenly, the quiet of the morning was broken by the slow chiming of a bell elsewhere in the village. Tarani gasped and suddenly started to fling her robe on.

"What does that mean?" Charles asked.

"Airship approaching!" Tarani said. "They are coming home!"

Charles gasped and followed her example again, gathering up his clothes from the floor and throwing them on as quickly as he could. Luke looked round from his fucking. "I'll join you folks shortly," he said with a grin.

A few minutes later, Charles arrived at the airship yards, a few paces behind Tarani. An airship was indeed visibly approaching, although it was still little more than a dot in the distance.

"Good morning," said a voice behind Charles. It was his father, who had brought a small brass telescope with him. He scanned the approaching craft. "Yes," he said, "the ladies are returning."

"We must hope," Charles replied.

"No call to be gloomy," said his father, patting him on the shoulder.

Within a few minutes, the airship had descended to a landing, and the ground crews were securing restraint cables. Suddenly, Tarani appeared beside Charles and his father.

"Come, please," she said. Charles was too startled to disobey as she led them forward, and the mechanics looked at her respectfully as they helped the airship crew transform the gondola's main door into steps once again. As soon as it was possible, Tarani climbed those steps, telling the two men to follow her.

As soon as they were aboard the craft, Tarani gave a joyful cry of "Laati!". Looking past her, Charles saw the unmistakeable figure of Captain Rukh, standing tall in black silk and leather. She was not now wearing a filter mask, however, revealing rather the plain but elegant and characterful face of an Indian woman perhaps approaching fifty years of age.

The Captain stepped forward with a quieter cry of her own of "Tarani!", and the two women embraced warmly. As they then drew apart, Oswald Dartington stepped up and also spoke the Captain's name, and she turned, looked at him, and said "Oh, my..."

"Laati," said Oswald, "may I introduce my son, Charles? And thank you for rescuing him."

Captain Rukh turned and smiled warmly at Charles. "We have met, briefly," she said, "but I must apologise for those circumstances..."

"It was..." Charles was unsure what to say, but returned the Captain's smile as best he could.

"And I have already heard much about you," she said to him. "We must talk, later. But first, I should speak with your father a little. And I have things to arrange. Always so busy, busy, busy." She scowled for a very brief moment. "And in any event," she went on, "you have friends who you will wish to see. They are in the wardroom."

"Oh," said Charles, "Yes. Thank you!" He turned to head to the front of the craft, but then, after a pace, he turned. "If you will excuse me, father?" he said.

Oswald Dartington laughed. "Of course," he said.

Emma, Sui Pai, and Moira were indeed waiting in the wardroom, standing with the impatient air of women who wanted to disembark, but they turned with happy expressions at Charles's arrival, as he spoke all their names. "I am so glad that you're safe..." he began, then stopped. "Emma!" he cried, "You are hurt!"

"Oh, yes, this," said Emma, raising a hand to touch the livid black eye on the right of her face. "I am sorry to shock you. Do not worry. I am recovering."

"But what happened to you?" Charles asked.

"It was my own foolish fault," Emma said. "I stepped into Sui Pai's backhand punch."

"What?"

"Sorry, but yes, she did," said Sui Pai. "We were training."

"Training for what?"

"For personal combat, of course," Emma said. "This mission went exactly as planned, and I am afraid that travelling on pirate voyages proves to feature just as much dull waiting to arrive as does travel as a civilian. So we spent the time as best we could."

"By having Sui Pai black your eye?" Charles asked.

"I told you," said Emma, sounding a little exasperated, "I failed to pay enough attention to her clear instructions. I feel an utter fool, and now I have the scars to show for it."

"You're not scarred until it's permanent," Moira chastised her. "But be calm, Charles. Emma is correct that she needs training, an' better a few bruises in training than worse in combat. An' she has the makings of a fair pirate."

"And the travel could have been quite dull," Emma said. "We had to make some use of the time."

"By learning to brawl," Charles muttered.

"Among other things." Emma stepped up to him, and leaned forward to kiss him on the cheek. "I also learned other things from Moira and Sui Pai," she murmured in his ear. "It was very informative. They are talented ladies."

"What?" Charles asked, dumbstruck.

"Oh, do not fear, Charles. I think that you still have some prospect of what you might wish of me," Emma said, smiling sweetly.

"Do stop teasing the boy... the young man," Moira told her from behind her right shoulder.

"An' let us say hello," said Sui Pai from her left.

Emma stepped back a pace, and the other two women took the opportunity to swoop in instantly and warmly embrace Charles, who found it difficult to complain of that.

But then, Tarani appeared in the wardroom doorway. "Excuse me, Charles, Emma," she said, "but we must ask you for your time."

"What's your call on these two, sergeant?" Moira asked.

"It is the Captain's call," said Tarani. "They are to accompany her as she disembarks."

Puzzled, but curious, Charles followed her, with Emma following him, back towards the doorway of the airship, where Captain Rukh and his father were waiting. The Captain smiled apologetically as he approached.

"Thank you, Emma, young man," she said. "I am sorry to use you so, but I must preserve the appearance of a pirate captain, and show my crew the products of my cleverness. As you and Oswald represent the success of my latest scheme, I should have you by my side when I address them."

"I fear that we are become pirate plunder, lad," Charles's father said.

"No, no," the Captain said hastily, "you are honoured..." But then she paused. "Ah," she murmured, "that English irony. I should remember you better."

"I would be honoured to accompany you," Charles said.

"Your son has more grace than yourself," Tarani commented to his father. Charles worried for a moment that there was some kind of quarrel brewing here, but then he observed that the others were all smiling.

The group moved to the doorway, and Emma, Oswald Dartington, and Charles descended the steps. Then Captain Rukh emerged, and a ragged cheer rose from the assembled pirates outside. She waved and descended the steps, then gathered her cloak around her, threw imperious glances at the three, and went striding off towards the pirate village's meeting hall, with them trailing behind.

Once there, she stepped up onto the low stage at one end of the room and launched into a brief but impassioned speech to her followers. This made it clear that, as Charles had begun to realise already, this was no simple band of robbers; the airship pirates sought revolution against the power of the Company in Asia, and this was popular with the crowd. The Captain described their recruitment of his father as a great accomplishment which would bring the pirates new advantages - she did not add that it also deprived the Company of his father's services, Charles noted, presumably because it would be unfortunate if anyone thought to blame his father for too much that he had done in the past - and she also mentioned himself and Emma in passing as having been saved from the Company. But she did keep the speech brief; this was not an audience with a taste for intricate debate. Having studied a very little rhetoric at school, Charles decided that this must have been a carefully prepared oration, but it struck him as a good one.

Then she stepped down from the stage with a last swirl of her cloak, and signed for himself, his father, Emma, and Tarani to follow her. They trailed in her wake as she strode to her personal quarters nearby.

Once there, with all of them inside, she closed the door, and Charles was a little surprised to see her shoulders sag. "Not a bad speech," she muttered. Then she all but staggered to an armchair, sat, and stretched her legs in front of her. "Tarani, my darling," she said, "could you help me with these damned boots?"

The amazon sergeant obliged with a wry smile, and for the first time, Charles looked properly at the boots in question. They were knee-high and made of soft leather, but most significantly, they had notably high heels. It struck Charles that Captain Rukh's imposing height and commanding stride must be partly matters of artifice and practice. Tarani found a pair of silk slippers somewhere, and the Captain drew them on with another look of relief.

"Tarani, please, ask someone to fetch us breakfast," she said. "I do not think that any of us can have eaten much today. Oh, and do sit, please," she added with a wave. "We all have much to talk about."

Charles obeyed, and saw that, while the room was comfortably furnished, it was not noticeably more luxurious than any other part of the village. The décor was Indian in style, but not ornate.

"Gods, I am glad that's done," the Captain said. "Oh well, such is duty. It is good to have you with us, Oswald, my old friend," she added.

"I'm happy myself," Charles's father replied, "and thank you again for rescuing Charles."

"So long as he himself does now see it as a rescue," the Captain said. "I had to tell Pai to put a dart in him, as I recall."

"I... bear no grudges," Charles murmured. "The situation was strange."

"That it was." The Captain looked thoughtful, and the conversation paused.

"Old friend," Oswald Dartington burst out, "What happened to you? When I knew you last, you were creating an engineering business..."

Captain Rukh smiled grimly. "So I was," she said, "but then I learned some hard truths. I was a woman, and an Indian, and I had no friends in the Company. Whereas I had rivals who suffered none of those faults."

"Especially not the last," muttered Tarani.

"Yes," the Captain agreed. "It was not long after our time working together that my business began to suffer. It became clear that my rivals intended to drive me to bankruptcy and devour my work. And the Company was with them."

"They were that corrupt?" Charles's father asked.

"You know that they are, and they were," Captain Rukh confirmed. "But I chose not to become their whipped minion. Tarani and I gathered up our papers, closed up the office, and prepared to flee by night. We planned to take ship to America."

"What happened?" Charles burst out, fascinated by the tale.

"I did not realise that my rivals had the office watched, night and day," the Captain explained. "I should have guessed. We had to run, and to fight." She looked sadly at Tarani. "That was when my best friend took a knife to the face for me... And I realised that we could never escape in peace. So." She smiled grimly. "So we went to war instead. Building from there to here was merely a matter of hard work and a little ingenuity."

"Which is how you became the Pirate Queen," Charles said. But then a breakfast arrived, of breads and rice and eggs and pickles, and everyone fell to eating. Charles was able to speak briefly to Emma, but she merely told him again that the airship's mission - to collect Captain Rukh from a friendly ship in mid-ocean - had passed without incident. Charles reflected that she perhaps failed to appreciate the sheer feat of navigation that the pirates had performed to make this look so straightforward.

Then, when the plates were empty and had been cleared, Captain Rukh clapped her hands once. "I am sorry, my friends, but I fear that we cannot spend all day gossiping," she said. "I will spend more time with all of you in the near future, but a Pirate Queen's work is never done."

Everyone took the hint and turned to leave the room, but then the Captain tapped Charles on the shoulder. "Just a moment, young man," she said, "my first piece of business concerns you."

And so Charles sat down again as the others departed. Then the Captain sat opposite him and smiled. "It is a pleasure to meet you," she said. "You so resemble your poor mother."

"You knew her?" Charles replied.

"Oh, yes. And before you ask, because I know how things may sometimes seem in this place - I was never romantically involved with your father. Actually, I thought that he and I were both married to our respective careers at that time. I respected your mother for distracting him as she did."

Charles smiled, but could think of nothing to say. Captain Rukh looked at him thoughtfully.

"But now we must consider her son's future," she said. "You were drawn into these intrigues and feuds without consent, shot and kidnapped. We should make that up to you."

"What do you mean?" Charles responded.

"I fear that you can never return to your old life, or anything much like it," the Captain explained, "the Company would hunt you down, if they knew where to look, and use you against Oswald. But we can give you a new life. We can arrange passage to some new place for you to live - in Australia, perhaps, or San Francisco. And we could provide you with funds to live in comfort, and to pay for further education."