Concerning a Brief History of Recent Motivations

It began, if such a thing can be said, on the day the representative from Trevelyn-Smythe Holdings Ltd. walked into Westin Importers in Holbern. He was slim, dapper, a raven three-piece suit and bowler matching the satchel he carried, and the rain was drizzling in the patient way of a bored god.
The contract was simple, bordering on routine – a flight to be made into the Kunluns, with their almost untapped trading potential, retrieve a cargo to be dropped at Katmandu and exchanged for something the company really wanted. The attaché would not say what – and quite frankly, with Trevelyn-Smythe’s money, he wouldn’t have to.
Unspecified cargo is something Westin approaches like a lit fuse – in our business you can only safely trust yourself, and if we had known unprocessed opium was involved matters might have become even less tenable. But equally troubling was our approach in the first place; Trevelyn-Smythe can and does afford to employ their own merchant ships and quite competent captains. He admitted that they did, indeed, initially assign their own ship on this venture with Captain Toulouse aboard, a man I knew well from our small community. But the Sopwith vanished three weeks ago without a word of contact since. They could only assume the new airship went down in the malcontent weather of the mountains.
We took the job, with our own contractual loophole built in. The way I prefer.

But then, whatever is really said, perhaps it all actually began a few weeks earlier than even this encounter, when the first bodies showed up on the streets of Shoreditch and Bethnal Green, and the mysterious residue in the footprints surrounding it.

In the Underground

London:

The cellars ran dark with fear, and black waste water, and rats. Funneled from the drains falling from the streets above, into twisting serpentine tunnels beneath the city, winding back upon itself; an architectural palindrome of brick and copper and steel, all uniform in color. Protected by rubberized knee-boots and breathing apparatus, Kinsey and I waded our way through the intestine of this beast, oily light from our lanterns shading the rats into monsters, and hopefully, edging the monsters into hiding.
Still, Kinsey had his shotgun loaded, on his back. This was science, but there could be dangerous things lurking here all the same. It was unfortunate a shotgun is of little use to the smell --- frightfully appalling.

We had been silent for the last half an hour, save for our progress through the septic water, and the ticking of my pocket-watch amplified when we halted. Water ran somewhere in the distance; the rest, a tomb. At one point we encountered the quite dead corpse of some lowlife, bobbing gently against a grating sloping off to the left. Discretion bade we leave him there. I have no doubt he was not the first nor last to be discarded in such manner, tossed into a storm drain in hopes of a final destination in the river.

"How much deeper should we go for these samples of yours, sir?" Kinsey asked, voice layered and scratchy behind the mask. A small falls from an adjoining tributary crashing over the bricks demanded he shout to be heard.
"Not much, I hope," I said. "I shall need a bath in solvents when I leave this foul place as it is. No, I think we shall know it when we see it."

And we did. The clock had moved perhaps twenty minutes when our path lead us into what can only be called a room, our simple lanterns fain to detect the walls. It was silent as a reservoir here, the air sour and yet with the merest hint of passage. The chamber may be closed, but as I feared something was getting out.
Cautiously, I pursued the walls, curving in sallow brick above my head, coming at last to the furthest south end, where the bricks could be seen to be set into earth, a sickly gray clay, as though the sewers abruptly ended into the side of a hill.
"Hold the light for me, Kinsey. I should like a sample of this." I pulled a vial from my jacket, wrapped in oil-cloth, and with my pen-knife dug a patch of clay about one of the bricks, the size of a man's fingernail, spooned it into the glass and set the cork.
"Most excellent."
"I hope it ends up being what you were seeking, sir," Kinsey said, handing over my lantern.
"Indeed. I trust it shall be most useful."
I had no sooner taken the light when I felt the water ripple must curiously about my calves, and cast about for a reason when Kinsey shouted, "Sir!!"
I turned, into yellow fangs, red eyes, claws, and the shotgun roared into the darkness with both barrels. The creature flew against the wall and into the water with a vile splash, and then the chamber was silent but for the movement on the walls. The air was violently vivisected by gunpowder, lights coruscating in my eyes and ears ringing despite the mask.
Kinsey quickly reloaded, tucking the butt of the rifle beneath his arm. "What in the devil's hell was that?"
I held the lantern aloft, as though that might better inform me. "Fetch a rope, Kinsey," I said. "We had best take this poor creature with us. No more of this life, he might prove useful still. . . . ."

Concerning the Potential and Valid Superstition of an Airship Crew

We dropped the airship to an altitude of three-hundred and twenty feet, trimmed sail and cut the engine power to drift just on the edge of darkness. I could feel in the hair upon my scalp there was something nefarious in there, and as the ship does not full stop quickly, I would prefer to take my time running into it.
The fog did offer the benefit of quelling murderous sedition. The pirates were shrewd enough to realize they would need us to chart course out of this unholy development, but I would need to deal with them soon enough, I knew.
The ship drifted gently, exerting only enough power to keep her afloat. Pepperidge, right arm in a sling, tried to peer through the wall of churning mist with a lantern held aloft. "It's no good," I said. "The sun itself is unable to pierce this."
"Aye, sir," he agreed, face ghostly in the oily light.
"It bodes no good, sir," another sailor growled. "May be part of the curse . . . ."
"Stow that talk," I snapped. "I do not need more nonsense aboard than we've already been plagued with." Certainly not superstition. And the truth was, I had been around enough to tell the difference.
"Mr. Pepperidge, have the engine engage one notch. I want lanterns at the bow, and we'll move in slowly."