Through Glass Darkly Episode 1 by Peter Knyte

Author:Peter Knyte [Knyte, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Science fiction - steampunk novel
Publisher: Clandestine Books Limited
Published: 2016-06-05T06:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 11 – KUBLA KHAN

While I was sure several meetings were continuing behind closed doors about what to do with our ship and crew, I discovered Fraser and Jenkins setting up a new base of operations in one of the larger rooms of the boathouse that looked out straight over the lake. It was a beautiful scene with the lake and the rolling landscape of the park, with the trees in the foreground framing the towering buildings of the city in the distance. Our ship, the Kubla Khan as she was officially known, or the Golden Goose as she’d been informally christened by the worlds press, was moored with its less damaged side facing the boathouse, and for a moment as I stared out of the large windows upon the ship sitting so placidly above the water in which its reflection shimmered, I was transported back to my first view of her hanging over the waters of Los Angeles bay.

Hughes by this point was renowned the world over not only for his delivery of the ‘The First Fifty.’ But also in the ensuing three years for having become one of the most capable and admired airship captains in the world. He’d asked for and expected no quarter or additional privilege because of his position and wealth, and had had to prove himself time and again in order to get away from his former billionaire playboy reputation. But along the way he’d begun to thrive upon the challenge, and while all the captains were also researchers and explorers as well as military leaders, Hughes had somehow managed the twin feat of pushing his ship to its very limits while at the same time nurturing and developing his crew to become one of the most highly performing units in the fleet.

He’d made no secret of the fact that the current fleet, in his view, was only enough to quell the increasing encroachments of the miasmic invaders for a few years, and that something else would be needed within that time before our enemy would once again start to overwhelm us, but he’d steadfastly kept his views on what that might be to himself.

Whether it had been his plan all along he never said, but as the majority of the world’s leaders slipped back into the complacency of just building ever more ships, Hughes somehow obtained the support to once again follow his own plan, and now as the mammoth craft that we would come to know as the Golden Goose travelled down the coast past Malibu, across the calm water of the bay toward the second Howard Hughes world broadcast.

This time though instead of a thousand identical cine recordings of his address, he stood before the world in person, upon a low stage on Cabrillo Beach with the giant aircraft hanging in the air behind him.

Around him on all sides were members of the worlds press corp, hundreds in number, some with simple notepads or voice recorders, others with enormous television cameras

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