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

by Richard Ellis Preston Jr.

  The old nightmares of her last day with Marter and the killing of Vadim were as vivid as they always were. Except, this time, Elizabeth’s appearance at the end was new, horrifyingly new.

  I’ll be damned, Sabrina thought. She wiped her face and neck with a towel and exited the washroom, returning to sit on her bed. Penny still watched her but she didn’t make eye contact, choosing to gaze out the sea window instead. Sabrina felt groggy, detached, as if she was unable to pull her head out of the dream world she’d just left. The ocean pulsed outside the glass, pulsed with a pressure as old and dark as the beginning of the world, and she felt it, felt it reaching for her, felt its weight on the surface of her eyeballs. She stared into the sea until her head hurt and bits of stars flickered inside her eyes.

  Sabrina shut her eyelids. A vision struck her from the darkness: the window glass shattered and the freezing sea burst in. She saw her dead body suspended, floating in a galaxy of flickering luminiferous aether and glowing, purple-bellied jellyfish. After the initial dismay it gave her an odd sense of relief.

  XXXV

  ELIZABETH IN CHAINS

  Buckle was on his feet before his eyes opened, before he was awake, pawing for his scabbard before it fell out of his lap and hit the dark floor and he was moving as he found it, moving, moving blindly toward the secret passageway. Elizabeth was with him in his dream. She was with him even now. And she’d shown him the way to find her. He reached the bulkhead where the secret hatch was located and began twisting and wrenching at every ornament he could wrap his hands around.

  “What?” Sabrina asked, sitting up in her bed. “Romulus?”

  “Get this damned hatch open!” Buckle ordered. Every nerve tingled, muddying the function of his half-awake brain. “She’s through here!”

  “Captain?” Welly asked, rising groggily from the divan.

  “Get this open!” Buckle shouted. He stepped back and kicked the bulkhead as if some expression of his frustration might knock the door open.

  “I know how to open the hatch,” Penny Dreadful announced, clanking across the deck to the bulkhead.

  “Quickly now, quickly!” Buckle pressed, hedging behind Penny as she began manipulating the wall decorations. She tapped her metal fingers along a semi-circular string of metal dolphins, depressing a number of them.

  Sabrina jumped out of bed. “What happened?”

  “I had a dream,” Buckle said. Shivering, he cinched his sword belt tight around his waist. He couldn’t shake the eerie sight of Elizabeth kneeling beside his chair in the darkness, the curve of her cheek lit by the aether night lamp, her hand on his forearm, its pressure so odd, incomplete, as if the fingers were more water than flesh. For an instant he feared what visited him had been her ghost—that Elizabeth was dead—but he knew she was alive. And now he was terrified of losing her again. I shall show you where I am, Elizabeth had whispered, the breathy issue of her voice sounded both close and distant, both intimate and as if forced toward him from far away. You must hurry.

  “She came to me in my dream as well,” Sabrina said. “Are you fully awake, Romulus?”

  “But it wasn’t a dream,” Buckle replied. “It was Elizabeth. She spoke to me. She showed me where she is. She showed me the way. She’s here, Sabrina! She’s here. We must go now, this instant,” Buckle said, turning to Penny. “Hurry up, damn you!”

  “But how do you know where she is?” Sabrina asked, scrambling for her boots and sword belt. Welly was up now, blinking.

  “Because she took me there,” Buckle replied.

  Penny spun a dial. Buckle heard a low hiss of compressed air as the hatch swung open into the aether-lit tunnel Lady Julia had used—the same tunnel Elizabeth had led him into in the dream. “Stay here!” Buckle ordered as he lunged through the hatchway, taking off at a run.

  “Damn it, Romulus!” Sabrina shouted after him. “Wait! We’ll come with you! Wait!”

  Buckle couldn’t wait. Elizabeth was in agony and alone and she’d shown him where she was. He raced along the long, narrow, curving passageway lit by a single tube of luminiferous aether overhead and similar to the carpenter’s walk on the Pneumatic Zeppelin. Every pipe and bulkhead, every inch of grating, every detail matched exactly what he had seen in his dream. It was difficult for his barely awakened brain to keep the residue of the vivid dreamscape from merging into the frantic movement and impression of the now.

  Elizabeth was there, running ahead of him in the passageway or, at least, her dream-memory led the way. She looked back at him, frightened, and it was a shock to witness her condition: eyes sunken and dark, cheekbones gaunt, her brown hair hanging in thick curls clotted with blood. More blood streaked her face and neck, staining her white blouse red and brown at the neck and shoulders. Buckle accelerated after her even though he was already dizzy, as if he were splitting the seams of time and space, as if the passageway was rotating around its own axis.

  “Romulus!” Sabrina screamed from behind, far away in the maze. But he couldn’t stop or turn to respond.

  Elizabeth’s boots left the metal grating and she lifted into the air, a fluttering white swan, wounded and bloody, attempting to take off in a long metal cage. Her image faded away but Buckle didn’t need it—he could make the trip through the labyrinth on his own. Elizabeth had already shown him the way.

  The passageway veered and branched into a myriad of tunnels, the metal veins of the underwater city, pulsing with the lifeblood of luminiferous aether. Buckle plunged down a circular stairwell in a tight spin to the right. Three levels down he reached the hatchway Elizabeth had led him to in the dream. He spun the crank and the hatch popped open with a swish of air, popping his eardrums and meeting him with the stink of wet wood, old seawater and machine oil.

  Buckle jumped into a wide, brightly lit, utilitarian passageway with a grimy metal grating for a floor. Stacks of barrels and crates lined the bulkheads, all in the same configurations he had seen in his dream.

  Buckle turned hard right, heading straight for a huge airlock hatch which was shut tight. This was where the dream of Elizabeth had ended. Elizabeth was in there. Whatever was behind the hatch, Elizabeth was inside of it.

  “Halt!” a surprised voice bellowed behind Buckle. He glanced over his shoulder to see the far end of the passageway crowded with armed Atlantean soldiers, their white and gold armor bright under the aether tubes, their pearl-colored swords and tridents clenched in their hands. An officer, a high-ranker from the looks of his scarlet helmet comb and the large scattershot pistol in his hand, shouted: “You there! Halt!”

  Buckle charged the docking bay hatch, having no idea how he might breach the towering disc. He heard the loud click of steel bolts, the squeal of a rotating wheel and felt a heave of pressurized air. Creaking, the hatch swung outward toward him.

  “What the—stop!” the Atlantean officer howled.

  Buckle drew his sword and plunged into the bright, rapidly widening gap in the hatchway. He was instantly face-to-face with a Founders seaman straining to push the hatch open; he was a short young man with a shaven head, wearing a dark blue uniform, and he had a striking look on his face and in his shining eyes—a look of confusion, a kind of unbelieving horror of a man who could not control himself.

  Knocking the seaman aside, Buckle raced into the airlock tube, its walls pressure-ribbed like the interior of a throat, and headed for the maw of a submarine hatch at the opposite end, a dark cavern lit by the green bioluminescent glow of boil.

  Elizabeth was in there. She was close.

  “Close the hatch!” Someone bellowed from the interior of the submarine, a voice with a strange, high-end vibrato that did not sound entirely human. “We are betrayed! Close the hatch!”

  Buckle drew his sword as he ran, holding the blade at the ready in front of him. Once he entered into the dark hatchway he would be at a disadvantage; running in from the well-lit docking tunnel into the interior darkness would put the defenders with their dark-accustomed eyes at the advantage. But
as he lunged through the hatchway he realized the submarine chamber just beyond the boil-lit passageway was spacious and high and full of illumination, pulsing with blue and yellow light. He smelled lubricant oil and blood.

  And there she was. Elizabeth burst into the passageway, running to him, stumbling, her regal face bloody and gaunt, her white shift stained with blood just as she had appeared to him in his dream. She threw out her arms to him, reaching for him, reaching for her salvation. “Romulus!” she gasped.

  It was Elizabeth. Not a memory. Not a dream. Not a mysterious vapor. She was only a few feet ahead of him, in the flesh. “Elizabeth!” Buckle cried. “I’m here! I am here!”

  Two Founders seamen burst out of the hatchway around Elizabeth, older men, experienced salts, one sandy haired and the other black haired, both shorter than Buckle but burly in the arms and shoulders. Their look of surprise shifted to fury as they grabbed hold of Elizabeth and dragged her back. “Intruder!” One of the seamen shouted.

  “Romulus!” Elizabeth screamed.

  “No!” Buckle roared, hurling his body headlong, saber whirling. He burst into a large, high chamber pulsing with yellow-blue light, the high bulkheads a riot of twisting metal pipes as if it were the nest of some huge machine-beast. The two seamen released Elizabeth and grabbed for the knives sheathed at their waists.

  Buckle slashed left and right. Stripes of red splattered the deck as both Founders seamen dropped. Buckle grabbed Elizabeth by the arm as she reached for him. Her eyes. He had not forgotten the immense depth of those brown eyes. In them he saw hope and despair, warning and need. Elizabeth was fighting for her mind. In the next instant he felt his connection to her being blocked, overwhelmed. Elizabeth fought it. She fought it. Blood burst out of her right nostril and poured down her lip.

  “Run!” Elizabeth cried, and though he was closer to her she sounded weaker. “It’s all wrong, Romulus. It’s a trap! Run!”

  “I’ll get you out of here!” Buckle shouted.

  A shadow swept behind Elizabeth, a looming figure silhouetted by the lights in the submarine chamber, a tall, winged creature glimmering with metal. It moved like a spider but it was humanoid. Buckle glimpsed goggles, their interiors glimmering with liquid, but the face was obscured by a metal helmet, a weird helmet crowned with hoops of metal holding metal spheres orbiting it like the satellites of a solar system; the figure’s long arm, draped in black cloth with metal-gauntleted fingers, wrapped around Elizabeth, pulling her away.

  “No!” Elizabeth screamed.

  The thing dragged Elizabeth back, dragged her back into the darkness.

  “No!” Buckle howled, his sword over his head. “Elizabeth!”

  A Martian, a tall, skinny creature wearing a gray uniform glorious with its rows of buttons and gold lace, his long black hair framing a zebra-striped face and goggle apparatus over his large black eyes, jumped in front of Buckle.

  “Stand aside, zebe!” Buckle roared.

  The Martian, drawing his rapier in a motion so quick it was no more than a blur, knocked Buckle’s blade aside in a rip of blue sparks. Buckle lunged, barely avoiding a skewering on the Martian’s quick blade. Buckle slashed, attempting to plow through the alien, but he found himself in trouble, barely deflecting swipes of steel so quick he was in immediate fear for his own life. But Buckle pressed, unwilling to sacrifice his forward momentum.

  The Martian backed up a step though he seemed unimpressed by the ferocity of Buckle’s attack; his Martian eyes, the treacherous, bottomless, black eyes of the full-blooded alien so much more intense than those of Max, whose half-human genetics had softened their malevolent aura to a great extent, looked somewhat amused after a deadly fashion, in the triumphant way a cat observes a mouse it has caught.

  Sailors brandishing cutlasses and pikes raced in, fanning out around the Martian’s flanks. Buckle was suddenly outnumbered and surrounded. He would not retreat, he would not give up one inch. He would rescue Elizabeth or perish in the attempt. He knocked a sailor’s cutlass aside, chopping him nearly in half on the backhand slash. The sailor dropped away and was replaced by two more attackers, one of them wearing steampiper black and silver.

  Buckle found himself fending off six weapons at once.

  A commotion rose behind Buckle, a clattering of armor and shouts. The Atlantean guards had followed him in. More bodies poured into the chamber, small, blue-coated submariners and tall, light-haired steampipers, their boots ringing on the grating.

  “Master Shuba! Get back!” the steampiper officer shouted at the Martian.

  “Do not kill him!” Shuba bellowed. “Take him alive!”

  About to be overwhelmed, Buckle slashed left and right, knocking swords and slicing hands, but the attackers wedged inside his guard, crashing into him, swamped him in fist-blows and grasping hands. The world spun upside down as Buckle fell. He knew a truncheon had struck his head but it seemed far more probable the submarine was rolling over than he would be toppling backwards.

  Buckle wanted to scream Elizabeth’s name but his mouth would make no sound. He landed on his back and everything fell into slow motion. Sound collapsed into the background, a trickle under the piercing ring in his ears. Above him the knives and truncheons of the Founders extended to confront the gold and white tridents of the Atlantean guards like two portcullises closing towards one another.

  “Leave him be!” Sabrina shouted, her voice echoing, shouted from the top of a distant peak, “Leave him be or your lives are forfeit, fogsuckers!”

  XXXVI

  UNDER ARREST

  “Because you are under arrest, that is why,” a woman’s voice trickled into the black void, whispered through the throbbing pain as Buckle returned to consciousness.

  “Captain Buckle has done nothing but attempt to defend one of our own,” a female voice shot back. Sabrina.

  “By brawling in the airlocks?” The voice belonged to Lady Julia and she was angry. “Doing what? Carrying out his own private little war? Our guards assisted in his defense, against orders, more out of instinct than self-preservation. Has your captain gone mad, charging the Founders in such a way? May I remind you that Aventine Atlantis is not at war with the Founders, at least not officially.”

  Buckle remembered the dark figure snatching Elizabeth away and shivered, something primitive inside of him frightened by the height of its metal-shod wings in the darkness. Buckle remembered the Martian officer, the one named Shuba. Do not kill him, Shuba had ordered. Why would they not try to kill him?

  “And how did you know how to open the secret door?” Lady Julia asked.

  “I picked the lock,” Sabrina replied.

  “If you are not a Founders why do you lie like one?” Lady Julia shot back. “It was the automaton. The little machine knows too much and that makes it doubly dangerous.”

  “What is to be done with us then?” Welly. That voice came out of Welly. Buckle felt he should open his eyes but it seemed like far too much effort at the moment. And in the blackness he could see Elizabeth, bloody and beaten. He feared that if he opened his eyes he would lose her altogether, for he could no longer feel her presence. She wasn’t there with him anymore. Despair washed through him. He had failed to rescue her. There was no reason to open his eyes.

  Lady Julia sighed. “Considering how difficult and unpredictable you have already proven to be as an ally, I am uncertain as to how to proceed. A real Crankshaft ambassador might have been helpful. Now Founders sailors have been killed. This spilling of blood has yet to be answered by the Vicar. He has sealed up his submersible but it still remains at dock. Yet there is nothing for it. We shall forcibly detach his submersible if he remains unbidden much longer.”

  Detach. If the Founders submersible left it would take Elizabeth with it. Elizabeth. Buckle stirred himself out of his malaise, forcing his eyes open. He found Penny Dreadful leaning over him.

  “The Captain is awake,” Penny said.

  Welly leaned in from nearby, his eel-leather seat squeaking u
nder his weight, “Take it easy, Sir.”

  Blinking, Buckle realized he was lying on a couch in the middle of a spacious, round chamber with soaring, ink-black walls. White marble columns and purple banners lined the room, reaching up to the lip of a white dome where a brilliant fresco of Neptune and Mars, Neptune under the sea and Mars above it, presided over the space. The carpet and cushions were of crimson velvet and the tables and chairs were either black or white. A white marble fountain dominated the center of the chamber, topped by a life-sized statue of a woman with a shock of curly hair—it had to be Cassandra Lombard—while fifty hippocampi leapt about her, clear water jetting from their mouths to gurgle in the basin. A great gateway, guarded by a statue of Neptune and two flesh-and-blood Praetorian guards, opened into a long corridor. A similar gateway, this one overseen by Mars and two more guards, mirrored it from the opposite wall. Two normal-sized hatchways were built into the other two walls opposing each other and while neither one was ornate their frames were brightly painted—one blue, the other green.

  Lady Julia stood near the fountain with Sabrina and Welly in front of her.

  “Are you alright, Captain?” Sabrina asked.

  “All square,” Buckle croaked, sitting up.

  “You are quite fortunate that my soldiers fished you out of that Founders boat, Captain Buckle,” Lady Julia said. “Or you would be dead now.”

  “They weren’t trying to kill me, it seemed,” Buckle said, planting his face in his hands and rubbing his temples.

  “A hostage, then,” Lady Julia said.

  “Elizabeth,” Buckle said. “The Founders have my sister, Elizabeth, in their submersible.”

  “Your sister?” Lady Julia huffed, not hiding her incredulity.

  “Elizabeth?” Sabrina asked. “How can you be so certain?”

  “Because I saw her,” Buckle answered.

  “Romulus,” Sabrina said softly. “I came in right behind you. I didn’t see her.”