Jack pushed the wardrobe door open and checked quickly before ducking out, and turning, “Milady, shall we make our exit?”
The two moved out into the main corridor, and started casually trotting towards the foyer. Slightly more than halfway down, Jack heard a door slam open, and glanced over his shoulder. There was Lovejoy, again. He must have figured out their trick. “Rose, C’mon!” Jack laughed as he started galloping away. Rose joined in, kicking up her dress as they sped past a few lounging nobles. At the stairs, Rose turned to make for the elevator, realizing it was faster than her running down those stairs, especially in a dress. Jack stopped abruptly, grabbing Rose’s arm with his own, “Hey Rose. Wanna take another flight instead?”
Lovejoy was almost there, and Rose was still high on adrenaline, so she nodded. Jack hopped onto her back, wrapping his hooves around her as his made a powerful flap. As Lovejoy scowled at the flapping Thestral, Rose shot him a hoof gesture that was unmistakably crude, “Take me down, milord.” Jack closed his wings, dropping the two between the rails of the stairs, four decks down to the bottom of the well. Above, Lovejoy was howling as he tried to run down the stairs, wordlessly. Jack had raised the stakes once more, and was gambling with almost everything he had.
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Jack sighed, leaning against a machine with his wings out, pressed against the machine, and around Rose. If anyone looked, the grey wings, still inked in black, would blend into the machinery well enough on a glance. He hoped, anyway, “That stallion’s pretty tough for a valet.”
“Used to be a tracker in Princess Celestia’s Royal court. Kale’s sire hired him to keep Kale out of trouble, and to make sure he always got back to the hotel with his wallet and watch, after some crawl through the less reputable parts of town…”
Jack pressed his muzzle to her forehead, “Kinda like we’re doing right now?”
“Ye..Oh no…”
The tracker was getting closer, and could see them again. Rose slid down, trying to hide her conspicuous mane color. “Jack, time to go.” Jack rolled his wings against his sides and galloped around the nearest corner, into a blind alley. One door, labeled Crew-only. Jack smirked and darted through it, dragging Rose with him. The thundering machinery on the other side made speech impossible, and the only other exit was a ladder going down. Jack kicked the deadbolt shut and pointed at the ladder. Rose smiled, and gave Lovejoy a second dose of profane hoof gestures and laughter as he tried to force the dead-bolted door open.
“After you, milady,” he gave Rose a gentle push onto the ladder, and looked back at the stallion still trying to force the door open. With a mocking grin, he saluted the Ex-tracker, and back-stepped off the ladder, dropping the five meters to the lower deck, the boiler-room.
Rose joined him, and Jack pointed, shouting over the roaring fires, “Beautiful, I’n’it.”
The visual of Tartarus itself burned into Rose’s eyes as she watched the blackened figures moving around in the smoke and glow of the fires for a few moments before they started towards the far end of the chamber. “Carry on! Don’t mind us!” Jack shouted to the workers, receiving several odd looks from a number of stallions and colts.
Through a door, they darted into the next boiler room, and squeezed between two boilers. Behind the blazing hot furnaces, there was a dark alcove, both out of sight of the stokers, and out of sight to anyone actually looking for them. Even from inside the gap, only an occasional glimpse of a crew-stallion galloping past with a cart of coal or a shovel broke the miniscule light reflected from the furnace fires.
The fire roared all around, but Jack and Rose heard none of it. They saw nothing but each-other. Heard only each-other. Not the clatter of coal being loaded into the furnaces, not the shouts of the crew over the roar, not even the constant, unrelenting pounding of the engines echoing back through the steam conduits.
Jack took Rose’s muzzle in his hooves and pressed her lips to his, listening to her moan as she leaned into his touch. Nothing separated them, not even the air they both struggled to breathe, between kisses.
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Kale scowled at his hoof-full of cards. It was a winning hoof, but he felt he had lost a more important game by letting Rose run rampant.
The Griffon across from him smiled, “We’re going like Tartarus, I tell you. I have fifty dollars that say we make it into New Yoke Tuesday night!” Kale simply glared at his cards. Above him, the clock, ticking away the time Lovejoy had been searching, was moving far into the night. It was nearing midnight, now, and Rose had been missing for upwards of four hours.
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Rose tailed Jack into the cargo hold, darting back and forth between crates for a few moments before grabbing one of Jack’s wings in her teeth and wrapping herself in it, to ward of the sudden cold, after the heat of the boiler room. Jack tugged his wing-tip loose of her teeth, and she moved to nuzzle his neck as he looked around, “Hey, Rose. Look!” The brand new carriage sitting on a pallet looked like a royal coach from some fairy-tale, brass trim and lamp-hooks nicely contrasted the deep burgundy color. Jack guided her over, and mockingly slipped into the driver’s seat. This one was a horse-less carriage, one powered by the new ‘internal combustion engine’, that meant one single pony could drive the heavy carriage without help.
Rose slid into the plush back-seat, acting every bit the noble she was expected to be, sitting upright, hooves in her lap, muzzle upturned so her neck was fully exposed. The illusion was almost enough to overcome the settled grime from the boiler-room, and Jack had to stifle a laugh as he looked in, “Where to, miss?”
“To the stars, Driver!” She reached forward and grabbed his neck, tugging him up over the back of the seat and into the carriage. He landed on top of her, lips mere inches from hers, legs on either side of hers, wings piled to the sides. It was the moment of truth for both of them, in the silent hold, in the car.
“Are you nervous?” He smiled down at her as he spoke, and she smiled shyly back.
“Au contraire, mon cher.” His hooves stroked her face, leaving streaks of coal dust in her golden fur. She kissed his hooves, then spat on the seat, “You’ve got coal on your hooves.” Her eyes were still smiling as she wiped her lips on the back of her arm, “Put your hooves on me Jack.”
He captured her lips in his own, and the two dipped into the seat.
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Senior radio operator Jack Frequency flapped his wings angrily, as his hooves pounded at the keys of a Mark-One Eye Wireless communication terminal. Beside him, Harried Bridle scowled at the huge stack of outgoing messages, “Look at this one here, he wants his private train to meet him. La dee da,” he slapped the file down, “We’ll be up all bloody night.”
As he moved to continue sending messages, another ship started sending, overriding the signal with painfully loud beeps, “Celestia! It’s that idiot on the Californian!”
He furiously hammered out a string of profanity at the Californian, finishing off with a message, “No seasickness. Poker business good. Jack.”
“Bastard interrupts me to say there’s ice. No shit there’s ice, it’s an ice field. That’s what the tower’s for.”
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Rose slapped her hoof against the foggy rear window, leaving a curved indent, and a crack in the glass. Jack’s wings lay across the seat, over both of them, and his borrowed coat lay over both wings like a blanket over sheets. She glances over Jack’s shoulder at the cracked window, then at Jack, face flushed as red as her mane. A fore-hoof pressed against his muzzle, making sure he was real, and this wasn’t just some fantasy that she was going to wake up from.
He smiled, “You’re trembling.” A statement, nothing more. He wrapped his hoof around her back, and pulled her close, “I can feel your heart beating.”
She pulled him closer, squeezing him tightly, never wanting this night to end.
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“Well, I wasn’t the first young mare to get seduced in the backseat of a carriage, and I certainly wouldn’t be the last. Not by several million,” Rose nodded her head to the orange Pegasus filly holding onto the back of one of the computer chairs, attention completely torn away from going over the video of the actual ship in favor of the tale being told.
A snicker from the camera-colt got him a kick in the ribs from the filly, and Rose continued before a fight could break out, “He had such fine hooves, artist’s hooves, but strong too. Roughened by the ground. He never, to my knowledge, wore more than rough boots. I remember their touch even now.
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The crow’s nest was cold, even with the extra hay the two look-outs had stuffed in it for insulation, and the extra clouds they had borrowed and packed around the tower as extra space to stand. Regimental Fleet, breathed into his hooves, trying to keep warm, and cursing the chill of the night, and the geniuses that figured a thin coat was enough for a Pegasus to stay warm, “You can smell ice, you know, when its near.”
His companion in misery, Leeward Spot, shook his mane to loosen some ice crystals from the long hair, “Bollocks.”
“Well, I can.”
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In the roar of the boiler-room, a pair of stewards, holding cloth over their mouths, followed Lovejoy, who was, in short, terse words, collecting information from stokers and messengers about the direction of his charge. They quickly gave up the information, shouting over the roaring furnaces, and Lovejoy started towards the forward hold.
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Kale stared at his open safe, then at the two pieces of paper he had pulled out, one the drawing, and source of the rage twisting his features. The other a note saying ‘Darling, now you can keep us both locked in your safe, Rose.”
His magic encased the drawing fully, and he tensed, prepared to tear it apart. With a sigh, he stopped, a better idea developing in his head. The picture slid back into the safe, and the diamond slid out, into his coat pocket.
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Lovejoy and the stewards reached the hold, and began looking around, the two stewards using magical lamps, him using a mouth-light. He spotted the carriage with fogged up windows, and the crack in the middle of a hoof-print. Gesturing silently to the stewards he moved around the vehicle, and flicked a hoof in a sign pointing to opening the door. The stewards grabbed the doors, and prepared to yank them open. The Earth pony tracker darted up as the doors opened, “Got yo…”
He stopped, his bluff being called, “Dammit.”
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Rose followed Jack out onto the fore-deck, laughing and giggling in each-other’s arms. Up above, Fleet looks down at them from the tower, smiling. Jack pulled back from their kiss with a gasp, and she spoke, breath misting in the chilly air.
“When this ship docks, I’m getting off with you.”
“This is crazy.”
“I know, it doesn’t make any sort of sense. That’s why I trust it,” she smiled, and found herself in Jack’s embrace once more.