by Anna Klein

In an alternate - steampunk - future, the home isles of the British Empire are being ravaged by a swift and devastating plague. A week ago, fears that it would reach London were confirmed, and the disease is sweeping through the city, leaving thousands dead in its wake. The plague is painful, its symptoms strange, the contagion unknown and survivors almost unheard of. Few plague doctors have dared to get close to the infected, and even fewer of those have survived to make report. The British Isles are in an uproar, and Her Majesty is most certainly not amused.

All airships were grounded, the Queen’s authorities feared a mass evacuation of the isles and the spread of the plague across the world. But the Chief Royal Computator of Probable Events, whose complex machinery and predictive algorithms advise the empire on its most fruitful course of actions, has decreed that in order for Britain to prevail, the airship Caliburnus must fly as scheduled, with its crew manifesto untouched. Why this small vessel and its unlikely passengers are the key to Britain’s future, not even the Chief Royal Computator can say...