August, 1899
Maeve looked at the X-1. The rumors had been true. Her Majesty’s navy had a new prototype submersible. She lay low, dark and sleek. Maeve tugged on the tunic. She strode down the dock and up the gangway. She saluted the ensign and then the man standing on the deck.
“Permission to come aboard, Suh!” She fought to control her brogue.
She did not wait for the return salute. “I am Ensign York, here to relieve the watch. Your captain is throwing a party for the Admiral. You have one hour to go home, clean up, and be at the yard officer’s club. All hands to attend.”
The scrawny officer snapped a return salute and leaned into the open hatch. "Boys, drop the cards! Captain’s buying rounds at the yard pub, and we’re officially relieved!” It took the four sailors ten minutes to assemble.
“My section is delayed. I can handle the watch till they show. Go home, clean up, and be at the club at 18:00 sharp.”
Maeve delivered the line with a perfectly dry, English snap, forcing down her Scottish brogue. The section lit down the gangway. As soon as they were out of sight, Maeve tossed a package on the pier and entered the boat. She stripped off the uniform, revealing the supple leather vest she normally wore.
She made her way to the control room, eyes scanning for the brass indicator plates she had studied. The throttle was a shiny brass affair. A heavy lever was labeled STEAM and ACCUM. Beneath the lever, Voltaic Status read 10 out of 100. She moved the lever to STEAM, pushed the throttle forward, and turned the wheel left. She heard the thick mooring lines groan under strain.
On the pier, the little submersible surged. Mooring lines groaned, smoked, and snapped with loud bangs. The parted hawsers snapped back, crushing crates and fittings on the pier. X-1 leaped forward like a racehorse out of the gate. Maeve steered the boat to the heart of the channel. The Hydro-Velocimeter increased from zero, one, two, five; as they cleared the harbor, the needle was passing fifteen. The rest of the gauges were a mystery, but it was clear Maeve was looking at the speed of the craft.
"Yer off yer heid! The pressure's in the bleedin' red!"
The voice, distorted by the steam impeller vibration and the voice tube, made Maeve’s blood run cold. She spotted a large spanner wrench and grabbed it, hefting it as she opened the engine room door wide. She leaped in, wrench raised in both hands. A slim woman, a chain trailing from her ankle, strained to reach a valve.
"Open the feckin' valve, ya amadán!" the dark-haired woman screamed, her Irish lilt sharp. Maeve turned the valve the woman could not reach. The roar of venting steam filled the room.
“That’ll do. Close the valve.”
Maeve looked at the slim woman, covered in black soot. A brass collar stamped 24601. sat around her neck.
“Aw, hell no.” Maeve muttered. She withdrew implements from her vest. She knelt at the woman’s ankle. In 3 minutes, the lock snapped open. Rising, Maeve turned her around. In another two, the collar opened. The woman removed the brass from her throat, tossed it into the bilge, and turned to Maeve.
Maeve smiled. “To hell with 24601. What’s your name, sister?’ She extended her hand.
The sooty woman grasped the hand offered. “Technician Third Kiara O’Connor.”
“Maeve. Maeve Sinclair.”
“Well, Maeve Sinclair, if you are done trying to blow up my engine, I think I will clean up. Don’t touch a bloody thing.”
Maeve followed her through the corridor, unsure if she could fully trust the newly freed slave. Maeve went to the controls, noting the speed was a crisp 18 knots. She spied a heavy brass thumbscrew on the wheel shaft. She tightened it and tried to turn the wheel; it was far harder to turn. Smiling, Maeve turned north and tightened the screw.
Maeve wandered back to the doorway with CAPTAIN etched on the brass plaque. The door was open, and Maeve could see into the lav, and under a rain stall, the trim figure of Kiara, soaping her breasts. Blushing, Maeve turned and went forward, sitting in the captain’s chair, her heart pounding. Kiara had a trim, strong body, yet her breasts looked soft and firm. Maeve felt flush.
“Did ye get a good look?” Maeve started. Kiara stood next to her, tugging an ivory comb through her wet black hair. Maeve blushed, embarrassed.
“Yer as stealthy as a drunk Doberman,” the engineer continued. Her eyes scanned the control panel.
“Neptune’s Balls. The accumulator banks are nearly depleted.” Kiara stepped to the control panel and tapped the glass. She turned to Maeve. “We should charge–” She was interrupted by a loud BOOM as the boat shook. Kiara peered out the quartz portals, looking port, then starboard. She saw a flash of fire, and moments later another BOOM, much closer, shook the submersible.
“Loscadh is dó ort!” Kiara spat. “A dreadnought!” She slammed the lever from STEAM to ACCUM and raced down the passage. “Turn the boat!”
Maeve maneuvered the little boat in a slalom, but saw the speed dropping fast. “We're slowing down!” she screamed.
Over the voice tube, “Upper left, the red lever! Pull it down!”
The submersible nosed down; water rushed over the portholes. Another blast shook the boat, crystal cracking on several dials. The speed was 5, and Maeve wrested the wheel to the right and found she could now push and pull on it. She pushed, and the nose lowered even more, diving into the watery depths.
Kiara’s voice came over the tube. “Half throttle, Missy.”
Maeve pulled the brass handle to the halfway mark. Kiara appeared.
“Well, it seems you found how to move the hydro wings.” She tapped a dial. “This side of the line is down. This half is up. Put the dial in the center.” Another indicator needle was jumping.
“She’s coming.” Kiara’s voice was cold.
"They cannae shoot the guns under the water," Maeve countered, her brogue thickening.
“Weighted mines,” Kiara whispered as an explosion drove the sub down thirty feet.
X-1 slammed into the bottom, and the lights went out. Geissler tubes gave dim illumination. The women went aft—a spray of something shot across the hull. Swearing, Kiara turned a valve. Maeve noticed the paint melting and smoking.
Kiara tapped a manometer. “We are taking on water.”
Maeve looked at her with fear on her face. “We’ll drown!”
Kiara sighed. “Not if I can help it.” She scurried around, throwing levers and valves.
Kiara pointed to a huge tank. “Vitriol Essence.” Then to a twin on the other side of the hull. “Caustic Liquor.” She traced the piping for each. They fed into a large iron retort. “The Iron Heart.” She patted the round vessel. The Caustic Liquor pipe was the one that had broken.
“Without both, we cannot make enough steam underwater to get the pressure to turn the impeller.”
She pointed to smaller pipes that ran to a smaller vessel. “We can turn an impeller and charge the accumulator. But the accumulator is running pumps to get the water out.” She turned valves and a manometer rose.
She stepped back, surveying the room. “The impeller will charge the batteries, but oh, so slowly.”
“We won’t drown,” Maeve whispered.
"No, but 'twill get mighty cold."
Kiara turned and made her way to the crew's galley. Maeve watched in wonder as the engineer made sandwiches from cured ham and retrieved stone bottles from a cabinet.
"Yer havin' a laugh, are ye!?" Maeve blurted, even as she accepted the food.
“Eat while we can.” Kiara sat at a table and began to eat.
Maeve found the table and benches firmly attached to the deck. The bread was smooth, the ham salty, and the porter strong. Then she noticed the humidity dampened the linen shirt Kiara had liberated from the captain's wardrobe, and how it clung to Kiara’s breasts; Maeve could see the brown circles of her nipples.
“How long before we can leave?” Maeve asked. “And how much air?”
“A day, lass. A day for enough charge to get the screw running.” Kiara finished her porter. “Air’s not the trouble. With the two of us, we could last a week, but it’ll be feckin’ Baltic out there.”
Kiara rose and headed to the captain’s quarters. She pointed to a door opposite.
“First Officer’s cabin.” She paused. “Or we can keep each other warm.”
Maeve slowly went into the first officer’s quarters. She was bone-tired and was soon asleep. She dreamt of Kiara in the rain stall. In the dream, she joined Kiara, slowly washing each other, mentally comparing her tits to hers, the smoothness of her skin, and wondering how soft her lips might be.
Maeve woke, disoriented. Kiara was not in the control room or galley; the captain’s cabin was empty. She looked in engineering and saw no one. She was about to leave when she heard a moan from the other side of the Iron Heart. Maeve looked around the vessel. Kiara was squatting, the linen shirt pulled up around her waist. Maeve remembered where Kiara squatted; a long reciprocating piston rod had been moving up and down as the bilge pump operated. Maeve gasped, realizing that the thick brass rod was thrusting- no, FUCKING the engineer.
Kiara woke, sore from sleeping in a soft bed. Her bed was a cot in the engine room. She was only free from the chain 3 times a day to prepare the food and eat a simple meal. And when she needed to dump and clean the pot, that was her lavatory. She went forward and read the steam gauges; the accumulator was up to 35 percent. The other gauge still jumped slightly.
“Still up there, are ye?” she whispered.
Kiara paused at the closed door of the first officer’s cabin. She heard faint snoring through the door. Kiara cracked the door. Maeve was lying in an awkward position, the borrowed nightshirt pulled up, exposing her red-furred vagina. Kiara could tell the thief’s tits were bigger than her own. She longed to enter, to taste the forbidden, as she had when indoctrinated after they had locked that damnable collar around her neck.
Kiara needed relief, and she knew how to get it. She had done it many times since being confined to the engine room. She had attached a brass extension to the bilge pump reciprocating rod. It was warmer by the smaller combustion retort, the heat leeching through the iron. The brass rod thrust steadily. She was wet just thinking about how good it would feel.
Her orgasm was close. The pump had been running for so long that the brass was warm. It thrust into her longer and thicker and harder than any man. She reached down to rub her clit. A gasp broke her focus; she looked up to see Maeve, her hand against the heart, staring at the mechanism driving into her contracting cunt.
“Tá mé ag teacht” Kiara groaned as fire erupted in her guts. Her cum was strong at the realization that her desire was watching her. Kiara shook and sank even lower, and the brass drove deeper than it ever had before. She screamed in pleasure. She clutched the pipe she used for balance and pulled herself off the thrusting pump. The brass was shiny with her essence.
Maeve stared, shocked. She also knew her nipples were hard, her pussy burned, and she wanted to mount the thrusting rod. She barely noticed Kiara approaching, breasts swaying seductively beneath the thin linen.
Kiara closed in, her mind set. Before Maeve could react, her hand was around the redhead’s neck, pulling. Hot lips met, and tongues explored through parted lips. Kiara saw Maeve’s eyes widen, then close as the kiss deepened. She took Maeve’s hand and led her to her cabin. Kiara pushed her down onto the goose-down bunk. She kissed her again, her hands busy unbuttoning Maeve's clothes.
The bunk sank beneath Maeve. The engineer stripped her of her clothes as efficiently as she would have stripped a steam valve for repair. Her breast heaved with excitement. Never had another woman touched her like this, and no man had touched her so deeply inside. She felt utterly bohemian and reveled in it. Kiara’s lips were on her nipples, and Maeve groaned. Kiara kissed her way across Maeve’s stomach, and through the thatch of red hair, landing a light kiss on the thief’s clit.
“Màthair Dhé” Maeve moaned.
Kiara’s tongue drove deep inside Maeve’s velvet walls. She relished Maeve’s taste. In the back of her mind, she wanted this to continue, but did not know what would happen when they once again felt the sun. She slid a finger inside the woman, eliciting a pleasurable moan. She began moving the finger in and out while her tongue worked on Maeve’s sensitive clit. Maeve squirmed, and Kiara applied her weight on one thigh to minimize the bucking hips. She worked the erect bundle of nerves more, and Maeve squealed as her orgasm burned through every fiber of her being.
Mother of God, she’s going to kiss me THERE. Maeve thought. She had seen sapphic sex once on a mutoscope, but never dreamed of experiencing it. Her hips were out of control; Kiara was driving her up the wall. Her nerves were on fire as Kiara sucked on her swollen clit; men had made her cum, but this was like nothing before. She exploded, a white flash of pleasure bursting before her eyes, and she screamed her pleasure.
Kiara moved up, holding Maeve and kissing her softly. Maeve greedily sucked her own juices from Kiara’s lips and tongue.
“When can we get out of here?” Maeve murmured as they lay together.
“Such romantic pillow talk,” Kiara whispered as she kissed Maeve’s neck and fondled a breast.
Maeve sighed and snuggled back into Kiara. “I love this. I really do, but–”
“Hush now, a chroí. I’ve got it under control.”
Maeve turned to face Kiara.
“The sooner we get this done–The sooner I deliver this to the Dutch, the sooner–”
Kiara interrupted her. “How much?” She felt a sadness that this was a simple act of treason.
“Enough that we will never work again for the rest of our lives.” Maeve took a breath. “Either together or separately.”
They separated slightly, eyes searching the other.
“Twenty Thousand.” Maeve took a breath. “We split it.”
Kiara kissed Maeve softly. “No. We share it.” She sat up and moved to the control room.
Maeve admired the bare bottom peeking from under the rumpled shirt. She followed, the cold of the deck biting her feet. Kiara tapped the brass-rimmed indicator, hovering at 40. She peered at the dial; it was no longer bouncing.
“Gave up, did ye?” she murmured as she saw the needle flat on the stethoscope hydrophone. She felt Maeve’s arms encircle her. “We can go now, Luv,” she said. Her eyes darted to the chronometer. “It’s almost dusk.”
Maeve’s lips kissed her neck. “Then let’s wait for dark, and ye can teach me to do to you what you did for me.”
oOo
They surfaced at night, and after 30 minutes the boilers were warmed up. Kiara eased power to the impeller, and they set a course north. It was 8 am when they finally ran past Scapa Flow. A single battleship lay at anchor. Maeve prayed they had not been spotted when a loud series of cracking noises came from a machine she had previously ignored.
Maeve muttered, “Bollocks.” She looked at Kiara. “They spotted us. Aetheric Telegraph.” No one pursued them, but the damage was done.
oOo
As they powered through the seas, they fell into a routine: one slept, one watched. They spent a shift together, and the other slept. Neither dressed, and when they met, they made love. After one session, and Maeve had her tongue deep inside Kiara’s quim, Maeve stopped her lover.
“Something’s not right, luv. We have not seen a single royal ship.”
Maeve laughed. “Probably because they found the chart I dropped in Troon. It had a big circle around Brest; even with the warning from Scapa Flow, the fleet is well out of position.” With that, she licked Kiara from her ass to her clit, circled the button, then sucked on it hard.
"Not feckin' fair!" Kiara cried, her Irish accent thick with pleasure. Maeve smiled as she lapped up the liquid offering from her lover.
Maeve slapped Kiara on the stomach. “Get up, Irish wench; your turn in the galley. I’m taking a chair up on deck.”
Kiara found Maeve in a chair, a spyglass in hand. The hatches were open, letting the hellish heat of the engine room vent from the aft hatch and cooler air be sucked in through the encasement hatch. The folding brass chair creaked as Kiara sat on Maeve’s lap. “Another day and we will be close to the Dutch coast.”
Maeve smiled as she fondled Kiara’s nipple. “Bloody inconvenient to have to wear clothes again.” Kiara got up and sighted the sun through a small brass tube. She then went down to the control room and punched numbers into the navigational engine.
The room erupted into a cacophony of spinning gears and tapping levers. The display wheels clicked, showing a position in latitude and longitude. Maeve came into the room just as the numbers stopped spinning.
They compared the position to the paper chart. “We are off,” Kiara observed.
“Gears don’t lie,” Maeve said with a smirk. “So a brilliant engineer tells me.” Maeve went to the controls and adjusted the course.
She found Kiara had stolen her seat topside. Maeve knelt and parted Kiara’s thighs. Kisses became licking, and licking became sucking as she drove the Irish woman to the edge. “Oh yes, love. Right there. No, your finger press, that’s it!” Kiara sighed as she approached her peak. Maeve slid a finger through the wetness between Kiara’s pussy lips, and pressed it against her ass. She paused, and, getting a moan in answer, slid her finger slowly into the back passage. Kiara began to shudder, and screamed her orgasm at the sky.
oOo
The last day dawned. They were five miles from the Dutch fortress of Hellevoetsluis. The women had dressed to be presentable, after a fashion. Both eschewed skirts and corsets; they wore trousers and linen shirts, wide belts, and Kiara wore her tool belt and brass goggles perched in her hair. Maeve had put her vest on. Maeve fired up the Aether telegraph and transmitted.
On a hunch, Kiara climbed to the top of the bridge casing, sweeping the horizon with the spyglass. Her heart leaped to her throat as she saw a cruiser plowing through the waves toward them, the Royal Navy ensign flying. She descended to control.
“Man the conn! We have company!” She darted aft, and Maeve typed one more message to the Dutch. Moving to the helm, she loosened the thumbscrew. Air pressure changed as Kiara slammed the aft hatch shut. “Ahead full,” The voice tube screamed. Throttle full, X-1 danced across the waves.
Maeve began erratic turns, but never more than a few degrees off the course for the safety of Dutch territory. Kiara reappeared.
“Steady as you go.” She climbed back up the ladder and opened the hatch. She stood far enough to use the glass.
“Steady, luv.” She peered through the spyglass, silent for a few moments. “They are closing, but slowly. It’s going to be very, very close.” The coastline was visible.
“Come starboard, luv, about 3 degrees. I see the fort.”
Maeve grew cold. NO! She screamed in her mind. We are so close!
“Another ship! Dead ahead!” Kiara refocused. “It’s Dutch!” She turned back to the English cruiser. She had focused just in time to see the flash.
“HARD A-PORT!” she screamed.
The nimble X-1 leaped to the left, and the splashes of two six-inch shells exploded where they had been moments ago. Seven seconds later, Kiara called for 20 degrees starboard, and again the explosions missed. Kiara counted down. ‘Direct to the fort!” she called.
X-1 danced like a thoroughbred. Suddenly the sound of ripping linen screamed overhead, and enormous splashes fell a few hundred yards short of the cruiser. Through the port, Maeve saw two enormous balls of flame, and she heard the same sound as twelve-inch shells sailed past, just that much closer to the trailing cruiser. Suddenly, the cruiser turned sharply toward the open ocean.
“Slow to 10, luv. We are safe under the guns.”
As they closed, a small patrol boat came out. They came alongside, and two men jumped onto the X-1, forward and aft.
“Line handlers?” Kiara called down.
“I speak English a little,” an officer on the boat called. “Yes, they tie to pier.”
Kiara guided Maeve to the quay. Lines were thrown to the men on deck. They wrapped the lines around the deck cleats. By the time Kiara had shut down the boilers and she and Maeve climbed out on the deck, a gangway had been secured, and a man in an officer’s uniform stepped aboard. He saluted. His eyes widened as Kiara returned it.
“I am Vice-Admiraal Willem-Jan de Jonge;” he said, speaking English. "On behalf of the Koninklijke Marine, and Her Majesty Queen Wilhelmina, welcome.”
The following week was a whirlwind. Maeve completed the transfer of the X-1 to the Dutch, and Kiara demonstrated what she knew of the equipment on board X-1.
May, 1900
From a balcony overlooking the Seine, the Eiffel Tower, lit by the setting sun, dominated the sky. Kiara stood naked, looking at the tower. Bare arms encircled Kiara’s waist from behind. Maeve leaned her chin on her lover’s shoulder, her red hair cascading over a tailored white silk shirt. Kiara smelled faintly of lavender and soap.
“Still as stealthy as a drunk Doberman.”
“I was busy admiring the view.” Maeve smiled, turning her lover for a kiss before handing her a glass of champagne.
Kiara looked at Paris, her fingers twining with Maeve’s. In her other hand, she held a set of blueprints she had been sketching all afternoon—designs for a new yacht powered by steam.
