Aetheric Airship, The

This audiobook is narrated by a digital voice. The morning fog clung to the cobblestones of New Britannia's harbor district like a reluctant guest at a party, unwilling to depart even as the sun climbed higher into the autumn sky. Captain Evangeline Hartwell adjusted her brass goggles and pulled her leather coat tighter against the chill as she made her way through the maze of docking towers that stretched toward the heavens like mechanical trees. Each tower held its own vessel, from modest merchant dirigibles to grand passenger liners, their hulls gleaming with the peculiar blue-green sheen that marked them as aether-powered craft. The Compass Rose waited for her at Tower Seventeen, and even after three years as its captain, Evangeline felt her heart quicken at the sight of her ship. She was smaller than the great commercial vessels that dominated the skyways, but what she lacked in size she more than made up for in elegance. Her hull was crafted from Catalonian cedar and reinforced with bands of sky-steel, while her envelope was sewn from silk so fine it seemed to shimmer with its own inner light. The aetheric engines hummed softly even at rest, their crystalline cores pulsing with captured starlight. "Morning, Captain," called Thomas Weatherby, her first mate, as she climbed the gangplank. He was a solid man in his forties, with graying temples and hands that bore the calluses of twenty years working the skyways. "We've got our passenger manifest for the Meridian run, and I've taken the liberty of reviewing the cargo manifests as well." Evangeline nodded, accepting the leather portfolio he offered. The Meridian run was their bread and butter, a twice-weekly journey between New Britannia and the floating city of Meridian that carried mail, light cargo, and passengers willing to pay premium rates for swift, comfortable travel. It was honest work, though hardly the adventure she had dreamed of when she first learned to pilot an airship at her father's side.