Sexy Skyship Babes: Chapter Three (Patreon)

Water was ironically less of a problem on an airship than a maritime vessel. A lot of that had to do with the fact that when an airship was running low on drinkable water, it need only chase down the nearest cloud and unfurl the fog harvesters to refill its reserves.

To that end, the crew didn’t need to be particularly frugal with their freshwater supply.

Within reason.

“Faster,” Leona howled as he plowed into her from behind, her glorious caramel ass bouncing in time with his thrusts, the wet slapping of their fevered fucking echoing through the small shower stall they now occupied.

Roger redoubled his efforts, gripping her hips for leverage as he thrust harder.

He’d been aboard the Misty Grave for three days now, and he could say with some confidence that their was not a single piece of furniture within Leona’s cabin that hadn’t been graced by their frantic fucking. Naturally, her personal shower got used fairly early on, yet it remained one of the captain’s favorite spots for their rendezvouses. Roger suspected the woman’s quiet addiction to ‘luxury’ was a large part of that.

Few things were more luxurious than spending half an hour in the shower on an airship.

Finally, he felt her clench inside him, the walls of her cunt fluttering like a thing possessed as she came. His own orgasm came but a moment later, as his virulent seed spilled into the pirate woman’s insides.

He was enjoying this holiday a lot.

Still, he made sure to shut the water in the shower off when he and Leona breathlessly stumbled out a few minutes later, having actually spent that time cleaning themselves. Sure, it didn’t benefit him to save water, but it bugged him to be wasteful. Not even a lifetime of wealth had removed that character trait from his psyche.

Toweling herself off, Leona smiled over at him. “Thanks, lover. That’s just the way I like to start my day. With a hot little Kingdom buck pounding away from between my thighs. A few more days of this and I might just be tempted to keep you instead of handing you back to that sister of yours.”

“I wouldn’t complain,” he said, feigning embarrassment.

Naturally, at his words, a wide smirk plastered itself across his captor’s face. Roger resisted the urge to smirk himself as he turned away from her, reaching for his own pants. He couldn’t believe the woman thought she’d somehow ‘broken him in’ with the power of her pussy. As if he was about to throw away his entire life and run away with her like some lovestruck moron because they’d slept together.

Still, as comical as it was, he could fully believe a man would believe the same if their situations were reversed.

Either way, it was good for him, because it made her more willing to accept his coming request.

“On the topic of the next few days,” he said as he belted pulled on his cleaned yet still tattered shirt. “As much fun as it’s been for me to spend nine hours each day staring at the same four walls, I do believe I’m beginning to get cabin fever.

That was only partially true. He figured he could have lasted another week or two before he genuinely started to feel his imprisonment. Leona’s cabin had a few books in it, and he was accustomed to wiling away a few hours here and there recalling what science he could from earth and noting it down – in English – in his journal.

It was kind of funny, but those memores were actually more easily recalled than those he’d made on this world. Perhaps it was because they were stored in his… soul, rather than his grey matter?

There was still a lot about this whole reincarnation thing he didn’t know and likely never would.

Leona frowned at his words. “I’m sorry my sweet, but you do realize why it is that I’m keeping you in here?”

“To protect my chastity?” he deadpanned.

The woman laughed.

“Well, I guess that ship’s sailed. Though perhaps I should be worried about protecting my crew from the relentless satyr we’ve brought on board instead?”

Roger feigned a pout, even as he privately noted that Leona’s words were more true than she knew.

“Please Leona.” He sidled up to her, gently gripping her forearm. “I won’t cause any trouble. I just want to get out of this room for a little bit.”

The woman’s dark skin flushed a bit, as her gaze darted to the side in a surprising show of bashfulness.  “Jokes aside, it’s not you I’m worried about darling.”

Huh, she was actually worried about him. Him specifically, not the ransom he represented.

…If he didn’t know any better, he’d say the rough and tumble pirate woman was catching feelings for her captive. Which he supposed wasn’t entirely unexpected. If he’d just spent three days with a pliant and eager lover, he too might have found his feelings towards them softening just a tad.

Provided he wasn’t the one who was the captive.

Which he was.

Which was why he’d spent much of that time plying the woman for information. Leona was actually quite weak to pillow talk, and such had only needed minimal prompting to start unloading her worries on him. He’d listened attentively as the woman talked about her desire to raise the prestige of her family and how she hated those who looked down on them for their mercenary origins.

He liked to think he’d played the part of the naïve damsel who’d fallen for her (or in this case, his) dashing and roguish captor to perfection.

To that end, Leona seemed to fully believe that the power of her vagina had somehow managed to undo a lifetime of loyalty to his homeland. A thought process that have left him feeling rather insulted if he had any actual loyalty to the place – and didn’t plan to see if he couldn’t shake loose a little loyalty himself through the same method.

Through those talks, he’d learned quite a bit about the political make-up of Avernorn and the current state of their navy. Sure, it was useless to him right now, but perhaps it would be of some value once he returned home.

Assuming anyone listened to his words on the subject, a dicey proposition at the best of times.

“You don’t trust your crew to behave with a man about?” he teased.

Leona frowned at the thought. For good reason. There was no reason to expect her crew to be any more disciplined than that of the Arrogance. Her command to keep him ‘clean’ had certainly been undercut over the last three days. Not a woman aboard would believe they hadn’t been borking, what with them sharing the same cabin. Sure, most were likely to consider it a natural consequence of officers operating by different rules than enlisted, but some might use it as an excuse to act… poorly.

None of that mattered though. He’d gotten a pretty good idea of Leona’s character over the past few days and he knew he’d needled her pride with that line.

“I trust them…” She muttered slowly. “They were all hand picked by me. I Just…”

Sensing her hesitation, he leaned in whispering in her ear. “Please Leona, it would mean the world to me.”

Then he straightened up, grinning at her. “And, if you’ll recall, I’m not totally helpless.”

In response to his words, the womans eyes ran along the musculature of his arms, a facet of his body she’d gotten to be quite intimately familiar with over the last few days. Fortunately for him, muscles on a man weren’t considered uncouth. Quite the opposite. It seemed that for all the oddities of this world, the female gaze still followed a rather conventional set of expectations where physical attractiveness was concerned.

Pale skin was still a sign of wealth and nobility, certainly, and thus coveted, but otherwise a conventionally masculine body type was still in-fashion.

Even if said body was expected to be entirely superficial. Once couldn’t have men risking themselves with unsafe behavior.

The whole thing was a study in paradoxes, but to Roger’s mind that was nothing new where fashion and societal expectations were concerned.

“I’m sure Triana remembers,” she chuckled. “The woman has a bruise the size of an orange running along her jaw – and not a woman aboard has let her forget where she got it from.”

Roger chuckled along with her, even as he privately wondered if that might become a problem for him later. Something he might need to nip in the bud.

Of course, all of that would only become a factor if he could actually get out of this cabin, so to that end he peered up at his captor hopefully.

She broke.

“Fine,” she huffed. “We’ll compromise. I can’t have you wandering around the Misty Grave, that’s just asking for trouble, but the Arrogance only has a skeleton crew on her. There’s a lot less chance of you bumping into a troublemaker over there. So… let me finish getting dressed and I’ll have someone hook-line you over.”

Roger made no attempt to hide his excitement from the first word that have left Leona’s mouth. It was only after a few moments of ecstatic smiling that he cottoned onto her last sentence.

“Hook-line?” he asked.

------------------

The young nobleman all-but shivered as he fought the urge to kiss the deck of the Arrogance. He had not enjoyed the trip over. Not one bit.

Sure, a hook-line was essentially just a zip-line, and he’d literally been tied to the thing, but zipping through the open skies on little more than a hook attached to a steel cable was still a terrifying experience.

He had no idea how pirates could do it while under fire. Not least of all because they definitely weren’t tied to the hook when they did.

Really, he should have known they’d send him across using a hook. They were hardly about to send out a shard or dock the ships just for him. The Arrogance was already being towed using the boarding cables and said cables were how the skeleton crew were getting between the ships. The Grave just raised or lowered itself relative to the Arrogance each time a shift changed.

“Didn’t enjoy the ride little Prince?”

Roger glared back at his escort - because of course even Leona wouldn’t let him wander around unsupervised. She wasn’t so smitten with her new boytoy that her brains had leaked out of her ears.

Arlet was an attractive dark skinned woman of Avernorian descent. Most people in this world were in Roger’s experience – attractive, not Avernorian.  Personally, he suspected it had something do with the native’s intermittent exposure to healing magic over subsequent generations. It looked to have ironed out a lot of the smaller imperfections that might mar someone’s appearance. Genetic defects. Asymmetry. Skin conditions. That sort of thing.

Unfortunately for him and any plans he might have had to seduce her into giving him freer reign, she was also very very gay. The grizzled woman had gazed more at her fellow sailors – who she saw every day - than she had at him on the way over here.

It was both annoying and amusing.

Bisexuality was all-but omnipresent and Lesbianism was, naturally, more popular on a world like this that it ever had been on Earth - but even outright lesbians often stared at him a little, if only for the novelty factor.

Arlet didn’t.

Her total lack of attraction to him was likely a contributing factor in why she had little patience for him in general. She seemed to think that having a man aboard was an added complication that the ship didn’t need.

Roger didn’t actually disagree. In his short trek from the captain’s cabin to the deck of the Misty Grave, he’d seen a few women walk into walls, crates or each other as he walked past.

Though in the crew’s defense, that was not entirely their fault. He was basically walking around topless, given that his shirt was still missing pretty much all of its buttons. Sure, in the parlance of this world, that wasn’t quite the same as being nude for a man, but it was close to it. A man walking around without a shirt was basically the equivalent of a girl walking around with just a bra up top.

Clearly Leona was showing off. If she’d wanted his shirt fixed, it would be.

It wasn’t the most professional of choices on her part, but it fit with his mental model of her. While lust alone wasn’t quite capable of overpowering her surprisingly chivalrous nature, pride would.

The woman desperately needed to prove something to the world. Showing off her latest conquest was just the latest way for her to do that. By having him appear to be unbothered by walking around with his shirt open, she was basically beating her chest and saying ‘look, I’ve totally broken in that prim and proper Kingdom boy and turned him into my personal sex toy’.

…Maybe she wasn’t saying it in quite so many words, but that was essentially the thought process that was at play.

“I can’t say I did,” he grunted, straightening himself up.

The brunette paused, clearly a little wrong footed by his words. She’d probably been expecting some complaint, or perhaps false bravado, from him. A frank admittance of discomfort was clearly outside of her expectations of a soft noble boy.

Still, she recovered quickly.

“Well, you’ve got the same to look forward to on the way back,” she said. “So you might be better served by just staying in your cabin a good lad for the rest of the trip.”

Despite her tone, Roger couldn’t help but sense that underneath it all, the woman wasn’t actively being malicious. She actually did want him out of sight and out of trouble until they could offload him because that was the best option for everyone involved.

Well, if one assumed that one of the parties involved wasn’t planning his escape.

Which he was – a task made only slightly more complicated by having an escort that he couldn’t wrap around his little finger.

“Well, I can only hope that the second time isn’t quite so bad then,” he said breezily.

The pirate muttered quietly to herself, but made no move to stop him as he headed for a hatch to the Arrogance’s interior.

---------------

As promised, the ship was basically a ghost town. The crew of the Misty Grave had made some small repairs to keep anything from exploding or being damaged further while the ship was towed, but it was clear that the lion’s share of the work was being saved until they reached a sky-dock.

Oh, and they’d cleaned up all the blood and disposed of the bodies, which Roger appreciated.

Still, it was a little strange to see a ship that had been all-but buzzing with life mere days ago now sitting effectively abandoned.

They came across a swarthy looking crew member carrying a hammer and a bag of nails as they walked through the halls. Her eyes lit up with interest as she noticed him, but that interest quickly turned to nervousness as her gaze slid over to his escort’s expression.

“Captain’s business, keep walking.” Arlot glared at her fellow Avernorian.

The other woman did as she was told, forlornly glancing at him as she hurried past.

“Someone’s got a reputation,” Roger said as soon as they were out of earshot.

His escort grunted. “A ship’s not one of your noble parties. A crew of hard-bitten bitches like this is only as well-behaved as the harder bitches keeping them that way. The captain relies on me to be one of those harder bitches.”

“Hmmm,” he hummed. “And I suppose that’s why you were chosen to be my escort for the afternoon?”

“That, and the fact that I’m not likely to lose my head and drop my pants the moment you bat those baby blues in my direction.” The pair reached another hatch and the woman dutifully stepped forward to open it for him, though not before eying him meaningfully. “I’m sorry to say that I prefer my partners a little softer than the likes of you, lad.”

“Duly noted,” he chuckled – as if he hadn’t already figured that out for himself.

He quickly forgot all about his guard’s sexual preferences as he descended the stairs and laid eyes on what he’d come all this way to see.

There, sat facing a pair of hatches large enough to accommodate their wide wingspans, was a pair of shards.

Magnificent, Roger thought as he stepped over to them, dodging around the many tool chests, spare parts and ammo boxes strewn about the place.

While superficially similar to the sort of biplanes used in world wars one and two, there were a number of large differences. For example, they lacked propellors. Instead they had a pair of thrusters connected to the aether-dust engine mounted to the exterior of the craft, just behind where the pilot sat.

Said thrusters weren’t particularly powerful, hence why this world had yet to advance beyond a dual-winged design. The craft needed the extra lift.

Well, that and the fact that we tend to launch them from airships rather than runways, Roger thought, running a hand along the craft’s smooth wooden wing.

A shard was never more vulnerable than in those first few seconds after it launched. While they were stalling to build up speed, they were basically sitting ducks for any craft that were already in the air. Attempts had been made to mitigate that with catapult launch systems, but it was still a flaw that needed to be worked on.

Idly, Roger ran a hand over the smooth wooden wing of the craft, luxuriating in the sensation of the cool varnished surface under his fingers.

He didn’t know what about the flying craft appealed so much to him. He just knew that he got positively  giddy each time he saw one.

He was just clambering up to get to look inside the plexiglass canopy – made using alchemy rather than science – when he was interrupted muttering coming from one of the side doors.

“Christ, hotter than blackwater tar down- What the hell is the guy doing down here!?”

Roger couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow at the deeply American – nay, Colonial – twang in the voice of the blonde woman that appeared in the doorway.

Plus, there was the whole Wild West theme she had going on, between her hat and cavalry spurs.

Cowgirl indeed, he couldn’t help but think as he gazed down at the deep valley the woman’s fairly gigantic tits had formed. Her sweater puppies were all but spilling out of her decidedly flimsy top. More to the point, whether out of personal preference, apathy or her likely antipathy to the heat, the woman had chosen to forego a bra.

And Roger couldn’t be more thankful.

“The Captain decided to let him stretch his legs before he went crazy, ma’am.” Arlet said, looking a little distracted herself.

“So you brought him down here?” The Colonial woman quirked an eyebrow, as she fanned herself with a hand.

Arlet shrugged, deliberately not staring as a droplet of oh so tantalizingly sweat slid across the swell of the woman’s massive breasts. “He asked. Then he made a beeline straight for this place.”

“Is that so?” The new arrival eyed him speculatively. “A bit of a Shard-Satyr, eh?”

Roger resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Of course, it couldn’t just be that he had a healthy appreciation for shards. No, he had to be using that as a disguise for some kind of fetish for the woman that flew them.

…That the latter statement was at least partially true did nothing to undercut his irritation at the assumption.

“Roger Miller.” He said, stifling anything he might have been feeling as he clambered down from the craft to extend a hand. “A pleasure.”

“Elsa Wilson.” The woman grinned back at him. “And I can assure you, the pleasure is all mine.”

Her hand lingered just a moment too than was strictly appropriate as she was being none too subtly eyed him up and down. Particularly his exposed chest.

“Is that a Colonial accent I hear?” he asked, refusing to let an awkward silence develop.

The Eight colonies – or just, the Colonies - were basically the equivalent to the United States in this world, being former Imperial subjects that decided to rebel against the former Empire. Of course, the same could be said for most other nations, including the Kingdom, but the Colonies had the distinction of being the only one to have rebelled back when the Empire was a fully functioning nation-state.

It was also the only one to have completely done away with the nobility, which made it something of a black sheep on the international scene.

“Elsa? You must be the pilot that so thoroughly wrecked my sister’s ship.”

For the first time since they’d met, something close to embarrassment seemed to slide across the woman’s face. “Ah, well, that was just business. Nothing personal.”

Roger cocked his head. “From Leona’s words, I had taken it to be quite personal. Both you and she apparently know my sibling from your time at the academy.”

And wasn’t he curious as to how a Colonial had not only attended said academy but subsequently came to serve on a Avernoian ship. Hell, he was curious as to why the ship, despite having a mostly Avernorian crew, had so many foreign nationals aboard.

“Ha, that’s mostly just Leona.” The woman laughed. “The woman never could take another girl looking down on her. And your sister never could quite tolerate her ‘lessers’ getting uppity. Those two were primed to hate each other from day one.

Roger nodded slowly. That fit pretty neatly with his own suspicions as to how that particular beef had formed.

“Well, I hope my sister’s behavior won’t cause you to think poorly of me,” he said. “Mostly because I would just love to keep poring over these shards here.”

The blonde cocked her head, before shrugging – which did some rather wonderful things to her breasts. “Well, I suppose if I’m here, there’s no harm in it.”

“My thanks,” Roger said as he walked over to the nearby step-ladder to get ready to once more peer into the cockpit.

“Though if you’re checking to see if the ignition-keys are still open, I’m sorry to tell you that we’ve already re-keyed them to a new owner. Same for the other two in the other room.”

Roger twitched, before slowly turning back to look at the blonde.

“Me specifically,” the woman said.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said slowly.

“So you weren’t planning some kind of daring escape the moment Mount Muscle here was distracted?” The woman gestured with her thumb to Arlet.

The woman in question scowled. “He wasn’t going anywhere with the flight shutters closed, ma’am.”

“They’re close right now.” Elsa shrugged. “But I could think of at least one way of opening them from the cockpit of a shard.”

So could Roger. Specifically, he could have shot out the thing’s restraining bolt quite easily from this angle using the shard’s guns.

Well, that plan was dead in the water now for now. There was no way he was overcoming a magical-locking system without suborning the ship’s mage. So that was another item on his slowly growing ‘to do’ list.

So rather than give away any of his thoughts on the subject, he just peered over the craft at the one behind it. One that had very specifically been excluded from the re-keying process.

The reason for which became obvious upon seeing it. It was a rather lovely looking two seater craft, with both forward and rear-mounted guns. The Dragon models were a little heavier and less maneuverable than single-seaters like the Drake he was currently stood on, but made up for that by being able to carry a much heavier armament in the form of four two-hundred kilogram bombs.

Of course, it wouldn’t be carrying anything so long as it still had a cannonball lodged in its engine block.

That was… unlucky. Looking now, he could even see a patch in the hull where the cannonball had originally come from.

Sure, the engine itself could be fixed, but the valuable aether contained within was now quite literally dust on the wind. And given that said aether was worth more than the entire air-frame, it wasn’t like the Misty Grave would be carrying a reserve of the stuff.

“I can see why your mage didn’t bother re-keying that one,” he murmured. “What are your plans for it?”

Elea shrugged as she ducked under the Drake to look at the damaged craft. “Currently I’m vacillating between just selling it for scrap or seeing if we can’t scare up an aether-dust supplier once we hit port.”

The latter was a task easier said than done. A nation’s aether stockpile dictated how large a military it could support in very real and concrete terms.

Now, a large part of the value of shards was in the fact that they literally only needed a handful of molecules of the stuff to operate, as compared to an entire crystal, but that was still a sizeable investment.

“Well, I can’t get you back the aether-dust, but I could fix the frame and engine.” Roger made no attempt to hide his enthusiasm. “I could have her ready to fly again the moment you get a line on some aether-dust.”

“You?” 

Just as he’d made no attempt to hide his enthusiasm, Elsa made no attempt to hide her skepticism. Even Arlet was looking at him askance.

He also made no attempt to hide his indignation at said skepticism. “What? You think because I’ve got a pair of testicles I can’t swing a wrench?”

The women glanced at each other before Elsa spoke. “Basically, yeah. Where would a noble-boy like you even learn to fix shards?”

Never mind that Elsa was likely the Colonial equivalent of aristocracy herself – i.e. filthy rich – if she was serving as a shard pilot. No, the main issue here wasn’t so much his social class as it was his social class combined with his gender.

“I’ve always had an interest in Shards,” he said, reigning his emotions in. Anymore than what he’d already shown and he’d start coming off as shrill or ‘hysterical’. “When I was younger I learned all I could about them. Then, when I was older, my grandfather and I bought a small civilian model.”

That was both a lie and the truth. His grandfather did own a shard. It just wasn’t powered by aether-dust.

…Or even capable of flight most of the time.

“Hmmm.”

Elsa hummed, gears whirring in her mind and Roger knew she was wavering. Not least of all because he knew she’d basically already written the craft off as scrap. 

In the middle of a war most of Avernorn’s aether reserves would be going to replenishing combat losses, not the creation of new craft. Especially not the re-creation of foreign craft that their pilots would need to be retrained on.

The relatively finite nature of Aether meant that quantity wasn’t the main aim of the game here. 

Quality was.

Which was why he chose that moment to launch what he liked to believe was the silver bullet of his burgeoning argument.

“And if I do somehow wreck it in the process with my clumsy male hands, well, I’m sure our captain will be happy to add the cost of the craft onto my ransom.”

“Ha,” Arlet laughed. “Have you no mercy for your poor sister, boy? Or are you that sore about her letting you get kidnapped in the first place?”

He kept his gaze on Elsa as he responded, watching her watch him. “It’s more like I’m confident I can get this thing fixed back up to spec. Sans aether-dust of course.”

Elsa paused for a long moment, before licking her lips slowly. “Alright, but what’s in it for me?”

“Aside from a fixed Shard if I’m successful?” he asked, already knowing where this conversation was going – and all the happier for it.

He did have something of a shard-jocky fetish after all.

“Forgive me if I’m skeptical of that being the outcome,” Elsa smiled apologetically. “So if I agree to this, it basically means I’ve written the machine off. Now, the captain won’t care, given it’s basically already scrap, but I would.”

She eyed him, gaze running up and down his body. “So, what’s in it for me personally, bucko?”

As far as hints went, it was about as subtle as the cannonball that ruined the Dragon initially.

To that end, Roger gave the woman the woman the sort of reluctant embarrassment he was sure she was expecting. “Well, if you need some kind of… assurance, I’m sure I could think of something I could do for you.”

He made sure to look away, blushing on command just like he’d practiced.

“Alright,” Elsa all but shouted. “You’ve got a deal!”

The cowgirl practically grabbed at his hand to shake it, as if scared he’d back out if she waited too long.

“Are you not going to ask the captain about this before making any deals?” Arlet asked, judgement heavy in her tone.

The blonde just waved airily at her. “Leo knows the deal. The ship’s her area, but anything to do with shards is my domain and my decision.”

Roger just watched the byplay and noted that something like that would never have flown on a Kingdom ship. Hell, he doubted it would have flown on any other Avernorian ship. It served as a reminder to him that for all their claims of being privateers, this crew had more in common with pirates than a conventional navy.

Which he probably should have been able to guess from the total absence of uniforms or rank signifiers on anyone but the captain. Hell, the only reason he’d known that Elsa was an officer was because Arlet had addressed her as ‘ma’am’.

Well, that and the fact that she was clearly a shard pilot – who were all officers by default.

“I’ll be telling her anyway,” Arlet said with finality, drawing his attention back to the small argument that was occurring. “Ma’am.”

Elsa just shrugged, before returning her attention back to Roger.

“Alright Roger,” the woman slung an arm around his shoulder, guiding him back in the direction of the doorway she’d originally arrived through. “If you’re going to be coming down here regularly to fix this baby up, how about I show you where you can find me if you need anything. And I do mean anything...”