FIC: [Haven] CLOCKWORK, Chapter 1 (Audrey/Duke/Nathan, R)

This is the start of posting this properly in places other than Tumblr. This version is a little more polished, and should fit in better with the latter half of the fic. There are 17 parts and I'm hoping to post it before the 31st, so at least one part per day until it's done. *fingers crossed*

TITLE: Clockwork
AUTHOR: roseveare
RATING: R/Mature
LENGTH: Approx 90,000 words total
PAIRING: Audrey/Duke/Nathan
SUMMARY: Steampunk Haven. Amnesiac fugitive Audrey Parker hires privateer airship captain Duke Crocker's Cape Rouge to fly her safe passage out of the city-state of Heppa, but they find their escape pursued by police automaton Nathan Wuornos and a deadly mystery enemy.
NOTES: Rabbitt made a list of prompts for possible Haven AUs on Tumblr, including "steampunk AU!", and is therefore almost completely to blame for this. I said I'd draw the thing, I have no idea how this happened.
DISCLAIMER: Virtually everything I know about airships was from reading the Wikipedia entry, although I also looked at enough steampunk art after Wikipedia to conclude This Is Not About Science. In any case, please forgive historical and technological and genre gaffs (I don't actually know hell of a lot about Steampunk, either).
------------

( CLOCKWORK - Chapter 1 )

(no subject)

Note, I am not posting CLOCKWORK to AO3 in 17 chapters. It can have it in 4 parts as I finish editing each part.

I am posting to DW/LJ in 17 chapters because of LJ character limits and to ff.net because of what a bitch it is to edit anything on that site and I'd rather have to re-up a short chapter than a 30k block if I do need to.

I... really do not do the posting-in-short-installments thing normally. It's only because it's a novel, and even then my preference is to post in the largest segments reasonable.