Edward Lane's Argosy Ch. 03

The first duels between two airships happened two years later when the first British military airship, the HMAS Dover, was intercepted by the 100 meter French airship IFAS Tours while interdicting smugglers around the Channel Isles. A twenty-minute skirmish with rifles, pistols, and a few rockets ended with the Dover retiring to its base on Gurensey with a ruptured balloon. After that, it was a matter of national pride for the major empires of Europe to employ airships as part of their military effort.

About that time, civilian use of the craft for trade began to flourish when some private enterprises realized the simple utility and security of moving valuable cargo via airship. In 1876 the first regular commercial airship service between Paris and Marsielles began, and by 1880 every major European city boasted a mooring tower. As the engines which propelled them became lighter and more efficient, the routes became more economical -- especially with the generous subsidy provided by the Imperial Crown. Even the occasional tragedy was overlooked, as the gaily-painted ships of the air peacefully flew mail, money, legal documents and wealthy passengers across the French countryside without the horror of French roads or the haphazard nature of the primitive French rail system.

The wars and skirmishes between the European powers continued in the air, with new and deadly uses for the airships being continuously found. When the Italian army surprised the French Imperial garrison in Piedmont by employing three airships to move two companies of light infantry fifty miles in one night -- over the sleeping heads of their foes -- to precipitate a deadly flanking maneuver, the tactical uses of airships became apparent. When Irish rebels used a homemade airship to land assassins on the roof of Leed's Castle and successfully murdered a Spanish envoy thought detrimental to their cause, the security concerns of airships became apparent. In 1887 a fleet of three Danish airships crossed the sea and looted three remote Polish villages down to their last copper, returning low in the sky from the amount of plunder they carried -- ushering in a new age of piracy where being landlocked was no barrier to attack.

In 1888 the French employed six massive Imperial-class warships above the skies of their Indo-Chinese empire, provoking widespread submission to French colonial administration by the backwards natives, demonstrating the utility of the craft in imperial conquest. When the comical Louisianan Empire's first French-made airship, the Emperor Aaron I, landed arms and munitions to the beleaguered Cherokee in their mountain stronghold in America in 1875 and helped win their freedom from American hegemony, the utility of airships in an insurgency became clear.

When Louis Napoleon, the rakish Prince Imperial, took to the skies above Paris in his own blue floating pleasure palace for his many assignations in 1879, inciting the hatred of the conservative Bourbonists and the admiration of the more liberal Parisian women, the possibilities of utilizing an airship for vice and prohibited pleasures was established. And when Baron Otto Kuiper returned to Berlin from India with a load of tea, silks, and spices on Christmas Day, 1882 -- without one penny going to the Anglo-Dutch East India Company or the British Crown -- the mercantile possibilities of the airship emerged.

If not for purposes of aggression or simple aggrandizement, then, every nation of Europe had to employ the craft in defense and interdiction duties. Even minor states and principalities purchased or made airships -- or risked being looted from above by predatory interests.

France, of course, was the heart of the airship industry, and several private concerns toiled to fill the demand. French commercial ships were, arguably, both more lavish and more efficient at passenger travel and cargo than most of her major competitors, the Germans and the British. Paris, being the heart of the Second Empire, was a central hub of activity in the skies, so much so that the mooring towers had been consigned to the edges of the city, save for two commercial posts and a yard convenient for military and governmental airships, for fear of accidental collision over the dense city center to the detriment of the people below.

Routes into and out of the city encouraged traffic to fly largely above the rivers, when possible, until the outskirts of the city were reached. There was also an elaborate system employing semaphore and control spires that lined the established routes. Edward knew only the barest rudiments of airship travel himself, having only traveled that way when absolutely essential -- and in Edward's line of work, that was rare. Apart from a quick trip back from Paris to London on the occasion of his sister's marriage, and four splendid days sailing off of the Canaries with his schoolmate Gideon Becker (and two local girls) on holiday in his family's private air yacht, Edward had not been aloft.

He didn't know the first thing about how to secure the use of an airship, nor how to pilot one should he steal it for the purpose. But he did know that the only way off of the roof of Cherensky's chateau was by airship. Either that, or it was back to growing wings.

This was not the sort of thing to have Pete try to arrange. As adept as the reprobate was at arranging things, Edward would likely have better luck asking him for a noblewoman's virginity as an airship -- it was simply beyond the man's purview. No respectable commercial airship company would consent to what he planned, and approaching the subject with his poor French would be, he was certain, a quick way to draw the attention of the gendarmes.

"I wish I knew where to find a bloody dirigible," he muttered half to himself as Annette worked diligently to relieve him of his seed in her now-accustomed manner. He hadn't meant to voice his frustration, especially in front of a whore whose loyalties were questionable at best, but that was what he was left with after nearly a week of fruitless prowling around airship yards.

"I know of one," Annette said, popping his cock out of her astute mouth in surprise.

"Eh? You do?" Edward said, startled.

"But of course! Annette knows all of the airmen! There is one, an American, who comes by regularly. He works at a yard east of Paris. He . . . likes to lick my arse," she confessed, blushing slightly. "And he has a lovely tongue! But then he does it the normal way. Always twice," she said, as if reading cues from a note card.

"You do? Who is this American?" he asked, quickly. An American might be just the thing -- likely not someone with a lot of Parisian ties -- and Americans were notoriously adventurous. Suddenly Edward's prospects began to improve. "What is his name?"

"William," Annette pronounced. "I saw him here only yesterday, monsieur. He said he worked for an English man, but I forget -- wait!" she said, suddenly. "I have it! He was in the city to purchase supplies for his ship, and left some of his papers!" Before he could stop her, Annette bolted up and began rooting around in the table next to the bed. "Aha!" she said, triumphantly. "There! There is the airship man's company! And they are not so far!"

"Annette, you are a wonder!" Edward said, reaching for the papers gleefully. To his further surprise the young whore quickly pulled them out of his reach. Then he realized what she wanted. She was a whore after all. "How much?" he asked, sighing.

"How much?" she asked, indignantly. "What are they worth?"

"Nothing, actually, if I don't read them," Edward admitted.

"Silly. If I give them to you . . .?"

"Yes?" Edward asked, gloomily, realizing that this job had just gotten more expensive.

" If I give them to you . . . will you fuck me, finally?"

"What?"

"It is just," Annette said, biting her lip fetchingly, "you are a handsome man, monsieur, and for weeks we have been playing at the same game. You come in. I suck your cock. I play with my cunt. You cum in my mouth. You leave," she recited.

"Well, that is what I'm paying for," Edward reminded.

"Oui, comprende vous," she nodded. "However, Annette has been waiting . . . and waiting . . . and waiting for monsieur to finally put his big hard pretty cock, that poor Annette has had to endure tormenting her in her mouth over and over, and never in her pussy! And it is such a beautiful cock! I suck and suck and suck, and . . . nothing! Am I ugly? Am I horrible? Yet you do not fuck me -- only one time in the arse! Perhaps you like boys, yes?"

"No!" Edward said, horrified -- a few furtive school experiences notwithstanding.

"Annette is happy to hear it! If I give these to you, then you will fuck me, yes?"

Edward stared at the cheeky young streetwalker with amusement. That was a price he would certainly pay, tradition and superstition be damned. "Let me see them first? If they help me, then I shall fuck you to your heart's content, as often as you'd like."

"We have an agreement!" the whore said, exceedingly pleased, as she returned the document to his hand with a twinkle in her eyes. Edward quickly saw it was a supply manifest and receipt from a procurer in town, mostly for food and mechanical supplies. He looked for the agent's signature, and then the delivery address -- and a broad grin emerged on his continence.

"Annette, my sweet, do suck me hard for a moment more, and then I will fuck you as soundly as any woman in my life. You just answered my prayers, and if it is a fucking you want, I vow to piston you until you climax so utterly that your descendents three generations hence will feel it!"

"Monsieur," she said, demurely dropping to her knees with Gaulish grace, "that is all I ask!"