“Sorry. But I like having fresh air to breathe, and the rest of these fellows do, too. We’re stopping, Josie. We’re putting up the air hose, and we’re freshening up, and then we’re headed back out again. I’ll get you to the Gulf, I swear to God. But you’re going to have to trust me, just this once.”

Josephine fumed to herself about the stopping point, but there was little to be done about it. The captain had made his decision, and the crew was willing to go along with it; so nothing she could add or argue would mean anything to any of them.

Never mind that this was her operation to start with. She was the one who’d arranged it, top to bottom. He had no right to overrule her.

It wasn’t that Cly was wrong. He was absolutely correct, and the air should be circulated on the half hour, as prescribed by the engineers. It was his insistence on being in charge, and the infuriating way that this stop — this one hidden docking spot, of all the hidden docking spots on the full expanse of the Mississippi — was the one closest to the greatest threat.

Josephine hated few things more than changing a set plan, and her plan had changed all over the place. No one had asked her if she thought a stop at the canal was a good idea. And now no one would listen when she told them there were better places, safer places, and that their change of plan must absolutely be reversed for the sake of the entire operation.

But what would she know, anyway? She was only the one who ought to be in charge.

While the men behind her unhitched the air hose and sent it chattering on the reel up through the water and into the open air, she climbed the ladder in order to take her foul mood outside, rather than risk being accused of being difficult, or in the way. The first man to broach either of those ideas would find himself missing teeth.

She wrenched the hatch’s wheel, and her ears popped when the seal did. She poked her head out and immediately spotted Rucker Little, who had scrambled over to Ganymede first. He stood knee-deep in the water, hanging off the rotted and disused pier while preparing to knock upon the hull to get the attention of those inside.

“Everything still good in there?”

“Sure,” she said. “They’re running the air tubes up now, and starting the generator.”

Behind her, something loud but far away cracked — and a warm yellow light bloomed in the distance. When she turned to get a better look, the glow of the far-off explosion revealed a small fleet of airships above the bay.

Even from this far away, Josephine could see that it was a motley, unofficial crew of ne’er-do-wells and pirates who occupied much of the sky. Their ships were not the uniform, predictable shapes of the Texian air brigades. The pirate craft were hodge-podged pieces of foreign ships and augmented weaponry. They were black and red, and trimmed with silver paints or flying their respective flags — not national flags, for there was no such thing among men who worked outside the law.

They flew the flags of the defiant.

They lifted their colors emblazoned with skeletons, skulls, and old-fashioned sabers, and they moved not in tidy ranks and rows, or with military discipline. They swarmed like hornets instead, menacing and independent of one another — yet everyone knew who was an ally, and who was a target.

Antiaircraft missiles blazed up from around the big island in the bay. They rose in a smattering of rockets that streaked from land to clouds, crashing and exploding against anything they hit. One illicit ship took a direct blow to its underside and began to spin — slowly at first, and then faster as it toppled out of the sky, exploding into a vivid white nova long before it hit the ground. The fire from its demise set several flags ablaze, Texian and pirate alike, and forced the ships that were fighting too close to withdraw, and regroup, and reconsider.

Josephine didn’t realize that her mouth had been hanging open as she watched, and she didn’t notice that she’d forgotten Rucker was behind her, until he spoke. “They’re losing, Josephine. Barataria’s just one more piece of Louisiana that Texas will hold.”

“How do you know that?” she asked without taking her eyes off the sky.

“The air pirates can only fly, and Texas has men on the air, on the ground, and in the water, too.”

“In the water?”

He told her, “They’ve taken patrol boats and moved them around the blocking islands at the mouth of the bay. Their other boats were too big to make it through. But those patrols — they’re small and sturdy enough to hold the antiaircraft guns. Texas can shoot from a dozen places at once, in every direction. Airships can’t compete with that. They move too slowly, in quarters as close as that airspace.”

Finally she faced him. “You’re telling me all this like you think we should do something about it.”

Rucker didn’t answer. He only watched over her shoulder as the bay caught fire in fits and starts, and was extinguished, and was fired upon once more. “I don’t think Texas deserves the bay any more than it deserves any other part of New Orleans. And the pirates … they saved your brother, took him into the fort when they could’ve left him out to die.”

“We can’t risk the detour.”

“I didn’t say we could.”

“But you’re thinking about it,” she accused.

“Sure, I’m thinking about it. And if you think those men piloting this crazy craft haven’t thought about it, then you’re so focused on your goal that you can’t see what’s going on around you. They’re pirates, too, Josephine. And before you curse them and their breed, just remember: you’re the one who picked them.”

“We’re going on to the Gulf from here. Down the river, while Texas and the Rebs are distracted by the bay.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure of that, if I were you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

From below, Cly called, “Josephine? You can see it up there, can’t you? The rockets’ red glare? We can hear it, down here.”

She could, yes. And it stunned her, both the beauty and the violence of it. She had no great love for the bay or the pirates, but they were better than the Texians, weren’t they? At least, they’d never occupied her Quarter, or closed down the streets she walked upon, or forced her to pay the taxes that kept them squatting on her city like a juicy, venomous toad.

“Rucker?” Cly saw the man’s face in the hatch opening.

“Captain?”

“We can help them, can’t we?”

“In this thing?” Rucker cleared his throat and spit over the side, into the river. “You could knock down the patrol boats one-two-three. Fish in a barrel, and they’d never see you coming. They’d never know what hit ’em.”

“It’s the right thing to do,” Cly said, to Josephine more than to Rucker.

He already knew what the man up top was thinking. He could hear it in the tone of Little’s voice, in the odd longing to see an old enemy routed — if not from the whole of the delta, then maybe from just this one small place. Maybe this one bay, this one island, which no one deserved to hold or keep, except the men who’d made it what it was.

From within, behind Cly, Josephine heard her brother — that traitorous devil. “Josephine, we could knock around the bay and cut past it to the south, right out into the Gulf. It’s a shortcut, really.”

Josephine growled and clenched her hands around the ladder’s rungs, then gave up and dropped herself down inside to face the two men who now were directly allied against her. A brother and an old lover — aligned in opposition to the woman who’d made this whole venture possible. If only they understood the depths of their treachery.…

Then again, the looks on their faces said they understood just fine, and were willing to risk it.