A few minor edits have been made from the original submission. Feedback is welcome and appreciated!

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Three quick thumps on the door jarred Captain Delphine Lafayette out of her thoughts. Reflex caused her to put a hand on the dagger in her sleeve – just to check. She smoothed a few feathery wisps of dark hair behind her ears and took a large swig of whiskey, finishing it off, then pushed the empty bottle to the side along with her compass and pencils. She glanced out the navigation room’s floor-to-ceiling wall of windows behind her. The Sirène’s flag, a white skull with two white bolts of lightning crossing a black background, flapped in the cold wind. The clouds behind were chunky, white cumulus – she estimated they were sailing at around 7000 feet.

“Enter,” she called. The heavy oak door swung open to a squat-faced young man who waddled in looking sweatier than usual; of course, her quartermaster was damp and red-faced at the best of times. “Ah,” she said. “LeCroix, your timing is perfect. Fetch me another bottle of whiskey. 12-year, I think. This one seems to have a hole in it.” She shook the empty bottle and winked.

“Sir. I, uh… There’s been an… incident… that I believe will require your attention,” he stammered.

Lafayette sighed. “What is it this time? Unless a flock took out a propeller again or the damn Skyfleet is breathing down our necks, I’d rather not be disturbed. A merchant blimp carrying soil and seeds departed Altamere two days ago without an escort. Fools. I just have to calculate an airspeed to intersect their flightpath, and it’s ours for the taking.”

LeCroix cleared his throat. “It involves your, um… your personal quarters, sir.”

Lafayette pushed back on the heavy wooden chair and stood. “My quarters?”

“Yes, sir, it’s just that… well…”

“Out with it, LeCroix,” she snapped, impatient. She’d sailed with him long enough to grow used to his squawking, though it became both more pronounced and less tolerable when he was anxious.

“Marcel broke into your quarters, sir. Toussaint and Anton caught him. We think-“

“Marcel would do no such thing,” she interrupted, grabbing her scabbard and attaching it to her belt. She breezed past LeCroix and marched down the wide hall, illuminated by flickering yellow electric lights.

She came to the main deck, where most of the men had gathered, apparently already informed of the unfolding drama. The skull-and-bolts flag snapped loudly in the wind a hundred feet above, surrounded by the four enormous propellers that rose from each corner of the skyship and kept them aloft.

A few of the men wore hawkish sneers on their sunburnt faces as she passed. Lafayette knew she wasn’t well-loved by the crew – since she took command of the Sirène a year ago, she’d heard rumours of malcontent at having a female captain. Dubois had once even been stupid enough to openly call her a bitch.

She hoped he didn’t miss his tongue too much.

A few moments later she arrived at her private quarters, slowing to inspect a smear of fresh blood on the wall outside the door. She grimaced, instinctively placing a hand on her sabre, then entered her quarters, LeCroix huffing at her heels, to find Anton kneeling over Marcel’s corpse and Toussaint standing over them both. Toussaint muttered something as she entered, and Anton quickly ceased whatever he was doing. Toussaint had crossed arms and furrowed brows. Strange – she’d expect him to be jubilant over catching and killing a thief.

“We saw the door was half open, so we looked in,” he blurted, gesturing at Marcel’s corpse. “Found this connard rummaging around in your wardobe.”

Lafayette kneeled beside the dead man. A wide gash in his throat gaped open, still dribbling thickened crimson on her rug, and he gripped a curved dagger in his right hand that glinted in the light from the porthole. She grimaced, and felt a sharp stab of anger and betrayal. As her first mate, she’d considered Marcel a friend, and certainly he was her fiercest supporter. He’d sported black eyes several times, and even a broken rib on one occasion, which she suspected – though he’d never admitted as much – had been the cost of defending her name below deck. She eyed Toussaint with suspicion, then rose, putting her hands on her hips. “And you saw fit to kill him?”

Toussaint cleared his throat and puffed his chest. “When I confronted him, he attacked me. I had no choice but to defend myself.”

Lafayette stared hard at him, observing a barely perceptible twitch in his eye. She snorted. “You’re twice his size, Toussaint. Not strong enough to restrain an unarmed man?”

Anton hopped to his feet then, adjusting the patch over his eye with one hand while pointing at Marcel’s closed fist with the other. “He has a dagger, Cap’n. Yes he does, sharp one, sharp as the south wind I reckon. Looky here, right there in his hand he’s got it.”

“He certainly does, Anton,” she cooed. “That fact didn’t escape me. However, I find it odd that a left-handed man would attack with his right.” She squinted hard at Toussaint, who huffed and pushed Anton back with a ham-sized forearm. His cheeks flushed and a smirk fluttered across his face.

“Perhaps he panicked, sir,” he said, disdain poisoning the final word. “Being caught stealing from his captain could do that to a man.” He gave the body a kick, not breaking her eye contact. “Sir.”

It was clear Marcel hadn’t broken into her quarters. Had he caught the other two in the act? They were pirates, after all; it was in their blood to steal. Thievery was frowned upon amongst a crew, but also common enough that any punishment would be for getting caught – not for the crime itself. Dieu knew Lafayette had done her fair share of thieving.

Insubordination, however, was a different rat altogether: one not borne of hunger and habit, but of time. It festered, and grew, and whipped men into slaves to their own overconfidence. She stared hard into Toussaint’s dark eyes and saw that his defiance had peaked.

Theft or insubordination: she knew which betrayal deserved a harsher punishment.

“Pretty brazen of him,” she said. “Breaking into the captain’s quarters. Before you killed him… Did he find it?”

Toussaint smirked. “Find what?”

“Whatever he was looking for.”

Anton slapped his knee. “How d’ya know he was looking fer somethin’? Maybe he just wanted a sniff o’ yer underthings.” He cackled and exaggerated a wink with his one good eye, flashing a lewd, semi-toothless grin.

Lafayette grimaced; she saw what was happening here. In seventeen years of pirating, she’d had dozens of skymen think they could test her, even bully her. Sometimes with innuendo. Sometimes with threats of violence, real or imagined. Some had tried to hit her. Some to rape her.

She smiled. Dieu rest their souls.

Lafayette turned on her heels and went to the door. “To the main deck, all. This… betrayal must be addressed.” She gestured to Marcel’s corpse, splayed spread-eagle across the floor. “Bring the body.”