Romulus Buckle and the Luminiferous Aether (The Chronicles of the Pneumatic Zeppelin #3)

by Richard Ellis Preston Jr.

  XIII

  THE MOON POOL

  Buckle’s head broke the surface into a glaring wall of light flooding through his greenish window glass. The weight of the helmet above the water was a struggle but he felt relieved, relieved to be away from the gagool. It would be good to get the helmet off, to breathe air that wasn’t stale.

  A pale white hand reached down from above, the fingers impossibly stiff. It was the arm of a statue, a beautiful marble woman leaning over the water. Flesh and blood human beings worked diligently alongside her, their pink and brown faces leaning over the edges of the pool as they fished the divers out of the water. Strong hands with sleeves rolled up to the elbows soon found Buckle, leveraging harness straps under his armpits and winching him out of the water.

  Swinging through the air until his diving boots landed on the deck, Buckle’s faceplate fogged and his suit felt heavy, dangerously so, to the point where he was impatient for someone to pry him out of it even as he felt expert hands unstrapping, unscrewing and unbuckling him from the gear. The helmet locks clicked and it lifted, straight up, over his head. The gush of cool air gave him a heady rush as it swept across his damp skin and flooded his lungs with sweetness. The diving chamber smelled like fish and wet leather, along with another deep ocean smell he did not recognize. The busyness of the space assaulted his psyche, used as it was to the muffled claustrophobia of the helmet. The low ceiling pulsed with glass tubes full of a bright, white-amber liquid. He had never seen such a kind of illumination before.

  The bulkheads of the oval diving chamber were packed with straightjacket-tidy rows of diving suits, air tanks, weight belts and harpoons, everything gold and cream colored and decorated with elegantly carved seahorses and ocean flora. The four Roman statues anchoring each compass point of the pool were both lovely and given utilitarian purpose, for their heads, arms and tridents sported built-in pulleys for the harnesses as they leveraged bulky divers out of the moon pool.

  Buckle’s diving suit was pulled away and he stepped out of the boots. His own leather boots—his entire body—felt weirdly light, even detached from gravity, and it made him a bit woozy. He scanned the crowded bay to make certain Sabrina, Welly and Penny were there—they were—then placed one hand against a bulkhead to steady himself.

  For thirty seconds the only sounds were the clank and rattle of the air tanks, the jingle of loose metal buckles and the brush of fabric and sealskin as the Atlanteans—four men and one woman—pried the last members of the Dart’s company out of their suits. Buckle noticed the Atlantean men and woman were lean and strong, though a little short—not one exceeded five foot and a half in height—and they smelled odd, emitting body odors not unpleasant but unfamiliar.

  “Curse the depths to hell,” Felix muttered.

  Buckle looked to Felix, who was supporting Gustey along with Kishi. Gustey looked better, for some color had returned to her face, though she appeared to be uncertain of where she was. Rachel and Tonda stood with them, free of their suits and grim-faced. The Dart’s crew had been decimated by the Guardians, losing both José and Marsh in the fight. “I am truly sorry for your losses, Captain Felix,” Buckle said.

  “Welcome to Atlantis,” Felix grumbled, his voice heavy and sad. “The price of transit is always too high.”

  “Please accept my condolences as well,” Sabrina said. “I hope your submarine can be salvaged.”

  “It can and it shall,” Felix said. “The Dart isn’t finished yet. That’s for damned certain.”

  “I shall send further compensation to you, to help pay for the damages,” Buckle offered. It was a pathetic way to try to ease the loss of life but it was the best he could do.

  “Much appreciated, Captain,” Felix said.

  “Silence!” the Atlantean diver, freed of her suit, snapped as she eyed the company from the hatchway. Her face was unpleasant, with small eyes and the jawline of a windswept ridge, her skin pearl-pale and her sand-colored hair pulled back against her head with a flat, silver barrette. She wore what looked to be a standard uniform, a tight white blouse and trousers, with rows of leather straps around the biceps and thighs. Her legs below the knees were wrapped with cream-colored puttees down to a set of gray oilskin boots. Air whiffing in and out of her nostrils, she glared at the dripping Penny Dreadful and ducked through the hatchway.

  The five Atlantean helpers stepped back and looked uneasy. No one spoke. Buckle waited for Felix to take the lead; the mercenary was the one who knew the Atlanteans, after all. Bubbles gurgled in the moon pool and a gentle rush of fan-driven air whistled faintly from cantilevered vents overhead.

  Buckle looked at Sabrina, who shrugged.

  “I hope we didn’t get this wet for nothing,” Sabrina whispered.

  “They don’t like unannounced visitors,” Kishi said.

  “And we killed one of their gagools,” Welly added.

  “The Atlanteans know me well and they are a hospitable clan,” Felix said, louder and somewhat angry. “But your insistence on bringing that thing”—he pointed at Penny Dreadful—“has endangered us all!”

  “The only reason we survived the Guardian attack was because of this little automaton,” Sabrina countered.

  “Silence!” the Atlantean diver roared, returning through the hatchway.

  A group of Atlanteans followed the diver into the chamber, led by a woman with the straight-backed bearing and rich perfumed breeze of nobility. Her skin was dark brown and her face, with big blue eyes, high forehead, and a great punch of black curly hair held up in gold lace chains, carried the aspect of a lioness. She wore a full-length stola, a draped wrap of white wool edged with thin purple stripes at the sleeve and shoulders, held in at the waist by a white belt studded with brilliantly colored seashells. Her jewelry was prodigious, in the form of gold and emerald earrings, bracelets and rings, and at her throat hung a cameo carved out of deepening layers of precious blue stone.

  More concerning to Buckle were the four men and women flanking the lioness, soldiers wearing bronze breastplates and Roman-patterned helmets over white tunics and knee-length skirts, with seahorse-engraved greaves on their shins and laced sandals on their feet. All four brandished well-polished tridents in their white gloved hands. Each of them also had a smooth, oblong device lined with valves built into the throat guard of their breastplates; Buckle assumed they were some kind of underwater breathing apparatus.

  One of the female soldiers, an older woman with four golden seahorses sewn into both sides of her high white collar, held a pistol in her free hand. It may have been the tension that exaggerated Buckle’s vision but to him the muzzle of the firearm looked extraordinarily big, like a scattergun.

  As soon as the tall noblewoman’s eyes found Penny Dreadful her demeanor shifted from annoyance to anger. “How dare you, Felix?” she said. “How dare you bring this mechanical abomination back into our city!”

  “My passenger insisted, Lady Cressida,” Felix responded quickly, with a quick bow. “And since he is a clan ambassador in a time of great uncertainty I felt compelled to bring him in.”

  “And how many gold coins did it take to compel you, Captain Felix?” Lady Cressida replied. “You know our laws. Your mercenary judgment has failed you once again.” She turned to Buckle and Sabrina. “None of you look anything like an ambassador.”

  “I am acting for my father,” Buckle said. “Admiral Balthazar Crankshaft of the Crankshaft clan.”

  “Turn the machine over to us immediately,” Lady Cressida ordered.

  “Lady Cressida,” Buckle answered, “I am here to negotiate an alliance with the leaders of your city.”

  Cressida’s eyes whipped to Buckle and back to Penny Dreadful. “Turn the abomination over to us so that it may be destroyed immediately. Then we can talk.”

  Buckle glanced at the dripping Penny, then back at Cressida. “This automaton is my property. I shall not turn it over.”

  “You have no choice,” Lady Cressida said evenly, menacing in the way of th
e calm before a storm.

  “You have no right to take it,” Buckle replied. He heard Sabrina open the watertight oilskin satchel behind him and felt the press of a sword handle into the palm of his right hand.

  “I have every right, for we built it,” Lady Cressida replied and stepped back. “Appropriate the machine,” she ordered.

  The four soldiers stepped forward, their trident points gleaming in the light. The older woman advance with her pistol ready, the wide muzzle looming like a sabertooth cave.

  Buckle jerked his sword around in front of him, whipping the blade out of the scabbard in the same motion. He heard a swift snap of leather, cloth and steel as Sabrina and Welly followed suit, their two blades joining his in front of the tridents.

  The four guards paused. Sword blades and tridents wavered under the bright lights.

  “Bad idea, Captain Buckle,” Felix muttered, hedging away, shaking his head. “Bad idea.”

  “Crankshaft!” Lady Cressida roared. “You have no idea what that thing is. Do you really wish to die here in a vain defense of this infernal machine?”

  Buckle gritted his teeth. He wasn’t going to give up Penny Dreadful. It would be a lousy place to die, however. He felt he should respond, but no words came.

  No one moved, the steel blades hanging in the balance.

  “Well, this has all gotten off on a rather bad foot,” Sabrina grumbled.

  XIV

  A MARTIAN CONSTITUTION

  Water. Nothing but darkness and the need for water. Max awoke, aware of returning from the longest slumber she had ever taken in her life, clawing at a bedside table for the cup she was certain would be there. The Martian half of her brain, that miserable never-stopping calculator and repository of endless details and bad memories, knew she’d been unconscious off and on for the better part of a week and, though she had yet to open her eyes, knew it was evening. She lay on her right side, away from the wounds the sabertooth beastie had inflicted upon her, not wishing to recall the dreams she’d been having, instead concentrating on the steady pump of the iron lung at the back of the room where her comatose brother, Tyro, lay entombed. Other sounds intruded: the soft murmurs of Dr. Edison Lee talking in the orderly room, the distant, joyous cries of children playing outside, hurtling through the wide spaces of the citadel parade grounds, the same spaces where as a child she had stood by and watched the others play.

  Grogginess lingered, muddling Max’s return to full consciousness. She denied herself a sense of frustration. She sensed the morphine fading in her bloodstream. Dr. Lee, knowing full well her dislike of sedatives, had kept her drugged in order to force her to sleep.

  Anxiety struck Max and she knew why. Romulus Buckle was gone away. The Pneumatic Zeppelin was gone away. A message had arrived from Spartak, how long ago she wasn’t sure—perhaps four days—which Nurse Florence Herzog had read to her; Romulus had joined the Russians in their defense against a Founders invasion force and won a great victory over Muscovy.

  She was not with them. With him.

  Max sucked in a long breath of air. The pinch of antiseptic and ammonia helped wake her more fully. She realized she was up against a wall of pillows, stacked to prevent her from rolling onto her heavily bandaged back.

  She relaxed. She would wait to open her eyes and call for water. Taking inventory of her body, she measured the pain in her neck and back where the sabertooth mauled her. Martians, even half-Martians, healed at a much faster rate than humans. No burning or fever, no signs of infection. A rocking of the shoulders proved the flesh sufficiently scabbed shut even if it hurt her to move.

  The sabertooth beastie lunged in the darkness behind her eyelids.

  Max jerked her eyes open, blinking in the sunset-colored light of a kerosene lantern on the table beside her bed. She watched the dancing lantern flame with its whirling scarves, imparting a lovely glow to the strips of salted blue cloth inside the glass bowl. Her eyes stung with their normal irritation. Damned dry earth air—although she had no idea what the more humid atmosphere of her father’s unnamed planet would feel like.

  She saw her leather flying helmet with its aqua vitae-filled goggles lying next to the lantern. Rolling forward, she inched up onto her elbow and collected the eyewear. Ignoring the agonies accompanying the movement, she eased herself into a sitting position. It was less uncomfortable than she had expected. She paused with her head down peering at the goggles as they sat in the folds of the gray woolen blanket in her lap, her long black hair flowing around her vision like the walls of a cave. She allowed the ligaments in her lower back and behind her knees a luxurious stretch against their invalid-bed tightness.

  She liked being alone. She liked the illusion of being hidden from the world. She and Tyro were alone in the infirmary. Her constant roommate of the last two weeks, other than a child who spent one night under observation with a terrible cough, wasn’t there—a rough-edged Pneumatic Zeppelin boilerman named Cornelius Valentine who had lost his left leg below the knee to the kraken over Tehachapi and somehow survived the trip home.

  Max parted her hair with her right hand so she could see Valentine’s bunk. He wasn’t dead because his bunk was a mess, a spill of blankets, and the nurses would have immediately replaced if his corpse had been carted away. His absence was a relief. He snored when he slept and sulked or shot bitter expletives at the nurses when he was awake. The man never wanted his wound dressed and when the prosthetic inventor came to take measurements he shouted the poor fellow out of the room, bellowing that his temporary wooden peg would be sufficient to serve what worthless scrap of life he had remaining.

  Valentine did not want to be healed. He wanted nothing but to escape the infirmary, collect his severance pay with its hefty wounding bonus and drink himself to death with it.

  In the despair of uselessness, Valentine and Max were one. She, too, desperately wanted to escape her recuperative imprisonment. The Snow World had fallen into war and it was inexcusable for her to be away from her station aboard the Pneumatic Zeppelin. At one point Dr. Lee mentioned that Max’s post had been temporarily filled by a foreign engineer, an Imperial clan princess, and Max could not stand the idea of her airship being cared for by such a woman. Yes, the Pneumatic Zeppelin had been built by the Imperials and the Crankshafts had stolen the air machine from them but it was Max’s airship now. And she needed to be on her.

  And Max needed to be alongside Romulus Buckle. She could deny herself any outward show of affection toward him but she could not deny herself his companionship. And if he was to die in battle then she must die with him.

  Max swung her legs over the side of the bed, planting her bare feet on the freezing floorboards, enjoying the little shock running up her legs. She heard the soft padding of shoes, someone walking into the room from the nurse’s station behind her.

  “Back into bed, Max,” came the warm, familiar voice of Dr. Lee. “You Martians heal quickly, but not that quickly. You’re not ready to take on the world again. Not quite yet.”

  “Is there word from the Pneumatic Zeppelin?” Max asked.

  “No. No word. Not since the report of the battle over Muscovy.” Dr. Lee halted, looking at Valentine’s bed. “Ah, and where is Mr. Valentine?”

  “They should have returned days ago,” Max muttered.

  “Where is Mr. Valentine?”

  “I don’t know where that foul-mouthed boilerman is,” Max grumbled. “Is that not your department, Doctor?” She stood up and almost fainted. Her helmet and goggles dropped from her lap, a vertigo-inducing tumble of leather, metal and flashing glass, falling with a thump on the floor.

  “Lieutenant!” Dr. Lee shouted, taking hold of her as she grabbed the cast iron headboard to stall the spin of the room. “Lie down, Lieutenant,” he ordered as he tried to guide her back onto her bed. “Nurse!” he yelled.

  Stiffening at the doctor’s touch, Max shook her head and locked her hands on the rail. She felt as if she had been still for a hundred years. She’d be damned if she
was going to lie in that bed for another second. “I am sufficiently recovered,” she said. “I am more than ready to return to my duties, Dr. Lee. And I would advise you to keep your morphine syringe very far away from my bloodstream.”

  Dr. Lee released his hold on Max’s forearms. “Be sensible, Lieutenant,” he said gently, reaching down and collecting her helmet from the floor. “At least sit down. And put these on before your eyes dehydrate.”

  “I shall sit,” Max said, tucking her bottom on the mattress—it did feel better than standing—and fitted the helmet over her head, cinching the leather until the lens pockets pressed securely around her eyes. She switched open the aqua vitae reservoir, flooding the lenses with the cool, clear fluid, an environment her eyes much preferred.

  “Yes, Doctor?” Nurse Flora Herzog asked, scurrying in.

  “Where has our other patient disappeared to?”

  Flora glanced at Valentine’s empty bunk and screwed up her face. “Oh, my. He was here at lunch. He wouldn’t eat his pudding. Complained to no end and wouldn’t eat it.” She hurried to the infirmary closet. “His clothes are gone.” She walked back to the nurse’s station. Max heard her open and shut the lavatory door.

  Dr. Lee sighed and crossed his arms. “What is it with you zeppelineers? Why don’t you have the sense to stay put when you’re hurt? Do I have to tie you all down?”

  “He went where he needed to go,” Max said. But Valentine’s disappearance made her anxious. As the Pneumatic Zeppelin’s first mate she was responsible for the wellbeing of her crew. And Valentine, yet to be discharged, was still her responsibility.

  Flora returned to the doorway with a helpless sigh.

  “He isn’t ready to be upright,” Dr. Lee replied. “He isn’t part Martian like you, Lieutenant. His body isn’t recovering from the amputation with the speed or efficiency of the constitution you have, which sews you up back up again like a mad seamstress. His wounds need to be disinfected and dressed. If he wants to kill himself he’s doing a bang up job of it.”