Ivan preferred not to think about that.
He was perched on the nose of the great zeppelin, a dot on its sheer, rounded face, standing on the iron frame of the black bowsprit, from which the jibboom extended forward nearly fifty feet in a tapering V shape, festooned with the tacks of jibs, stays, long rolls of antiboarding netting, and the furled spinnaker sail, leading the ship like a hollow arrowhead. He screwed his boots down on the narrow bowsprit in an attempt to secure his footing. The Pneumatic Zeppelin was moving so slowly that the slipstream wasn’t a problem, and he was well anchored with two safety lines—one hooked to the bow pulpit and the other hooked into the small rail along the port side of the gun turret—but he was holding a twenty-foot wooden fending pike, and if floating mines appeared, he would be leveraging himself into a variety of precarious positions.
Ivan wasn’t the only one on the exterior—the airship’s entire complement of skinners and riggers were also stationed evenly on both flanks of the ship’s axis, all armed with fending pikes, their numbers supplemented by a Ballblaster here and there. He could see none of them in the dense mist, however, not even Chief Skinner Marian Boyd, who was only a few yards to his right on the other side of the bowsprit, so for all intents and purposes, he was alone.
Ivan peered into the vaporous nothingness that pressed him with its gentle, invisible current. He could only make out fifteen feet of the jibboom before it vanished, plunging into the obscurity of the mists. He cursed the condensation distorting his goggle lenses; his constant wiping resulted in muddy streaks that were only slightly better in terms of clarity. But his main discomfort was an itch on the end of his nose. He considered lifting the oxygen helmet up so he could quickly scratch the offending skin, holding his breath until he clamped the mask back down—he was certain that the airship had not yet descended to the level of the yellow-colored mustard gas—but he thought better of it. He gripped his fending pike tightly, hoping that the painful clutch of his fingers would distract him from the itching that was rapidly threatening to drive him mad. The fending pike had a copper grasper attached to the tip of its pole, and Ivan could open and close the grasper by manipulating a control wire that ran alongside the shaft. The fending pike was light, made of hollow wood and thin metal, but the awkward tug and pull of it was taxing his muscles already. Ivan wasn’t a big fellow; the thin rails he had for arms possessed a wiry strength good for twisting wrenches, but not for manhandling jousting lances.
Eyes up. Watch the sky. Or at least the gray wall, which is all the sky you’ll get, Ivan thought. If there actually was a floating minefield within the fog bank surrounding the City of the Founders, and such things were not merely the inspired imaginings of storytellers beefing up their myths around the campfires, then he’d better be ready. He peered into the roiling mist. Once a mine came at him, either straight on or skidding along the leading edge of the bowsprit, he would only have a few seconds to bring the fending pike to bear, grasp the chain, and pass it along to the next crewman twenty feet behind him, who was ready to pass the bomb to his fellows along the flank from bow to stern.
Ivan sighed inside his mask. It was as if he was aboard a ghost ship. He could see very little except his side of the bow pulpit, and the bowsprit plunging into oblivion, along with its bracing wires and tack. The constant whoosh of the passing wind outside the helmet and the low ping of the air cylinder valve left him alone with his own thoughts, thoughts that were amplified along with the rasps of his own breathing.
His own thoughts. His own thoughts usually frustrated him. Trying to figure out people and politics was as tangled and unrewarding as philosophy. He liked math. Practical problems. A Gordian knot of malfunctioning machinery allowed him to immerse his mind in the complicated calculations of a perfect grease-lubricated solution. That was the crackerjack life. Sitting in a garden and ruminating on the world was as limp and useless as pap. And being here, alone in the mist with one’s own thoughts, despite the possibility of sky mines, was sort of equivalent to sitting in a garden. Pap.
And of course there might not even be any sky mines. No one knew. He could be out here half an hour, maybe more, and never see anything but vapor. That would be a good thing, yes, but unlikely. Not uncommon in the Snow World, sky mines were the favored defense of fixed positions against airship raids: tethered to the ground by chains, they were small hydrogen balloons that piggybacked loads of blackbang explosives porcupined with pressure triggers. Sky mines were expensive and unreliable, and often duds, but it only took one good bump—a brutal blast of shrapnel and flame—to incinerate a hydrogen airship.
Ivan’s imagination took off. If they struck a sky mine he would feel the airship shudder—if he wasn’t instantly vaporized by the first detonation—and then drop violently as the hydrogen gasbags exploded in rapid sequence. He could unhook his safety harnesses and jump free of the fireball. But he wasn’t high enough above the ground to deploy his parachute. He’d rather jump than burn. He had seen friends die by fire in airships. He didn’t want to go that way.
What was all this thinking? Pap.
His eyeballs quivered, straining from his intense peering into the void. He placed his hand on his mask and worked it around in small circles so the padding massaged his head, hoping to ease some of the stress on the muscles in his forehead and cheeks.
He heard a screeching, a weird, assaulting sound, both metallic and animal, and for a moment it unnerved him. Was it something alive? Some sort of horrible beastie that lived in the fog?
The screech came closer and closer, and when Ivan saw dull yellow flashes in the murk ahead, he realized what it was. A metal chain was skidding along his side of the jibboom, casting sparks and catching here and there on the tack. He swung the fending pole forward and pulled the grasper wide open. The sparks grew brighter and brighter and the screeching increased with such intensity he thought it might shatter the faceplate of his helmet.
“Let’s have at it, you bastard sticker!” Ivan shouted, more to try to clear the pressure on his eardrums than anything else. The vertical chain popped out of the fog, a wreath of fiery sparks swirling at the point of contact between its rusty links and the bowsprit, and fifteen feet up, at the end of the line, bobbled the black, spiky ball of the sky mine.
BALTHAZAR’S ORPHANS
CAPTAIN BUCKLE STOOD IN HIS cabin, looking up through the huge nose-dome window, hands folded behind his back, watching the sky mine skid and jerk along the port side of the jibboom of the Pneumatic Zeppelin. The mine had materialized from the undulating mist as if a ghost, but there was nothing ghostly about it: its chain was smothered in coppery green rust; its black balloon, shining with condensation, was packed with waterproofed-oilskin explosive packets, each spiked like cactus with tap-headed pressure triggers.
Buckle saw Ivan extend his fending pike from the left side of the bow pulpit and capture the chain with the clamp of his grasper, smoothly swinging the sky mine out and away from the ship. The sky mine slipped out of sight to the port side as Ivan passed it over to the next crew member waiting behind; on and on the bomb would be transferred along the length of the great airship, until the last person freed it beyond the fins at the stern.
Somewhat relieved, Buckle stepped to the washbasin beside his bunk and flipped open the hot water tap to scrub the last crusts of tangler guts off his hands. He had also managed a fresh change of clothes, and had scraped his leather coat and boots relatively clean of the tangler goo as well. Now, with his sword and pistol belts comfortably snug against his waist, his metal breastplate clasped tight around his rib cage, his heavy air cylinder and its helmet riding easily on the tough sinews of his shoulders, he felt strong.
It was Buckle’s last tranquil moment away from the accelerating preparations for the attack. Kellie chewed at her paw on his bed. He smelled cinnamon: the cook, Perriman Salisbury, had sprinkled cinnamon on his potato pancakes at breakfast, which he had eaten at the Lion’s Table with Max, Sabrina, Ivan, and Surgeon Fogg. Salisbury, or Coo
kie, as everyone called him, only uncorked the cinnamon jar when dangerous missions lay ahead. Cinnamon on your pancake meant that Cookie thought you were in for it.
And the tough part of the day had not even begun.
Buckle had returned to his quarters to pick up Balthazar’s medicine. Sabrina had brought the vials from home, and the ones she had given to Buckle were secured inside a metal tin, which was tucked into a small leather chemist’s pouch. The medicine was an amber-colored elixir mixed up by the Crankshaft clan apothecary, to help alleviate the shaking fits from which Balthazar had begun to suffer in his mature years. Balthazar’s infirmity was a well-kept secret. Only those closest to him were aware of his condition. He still appeared to be quite healthy and hale, so when a seizure came on, his children whisked him out of the public eye before anyone could witness his affliction. Unfortunately, the convulsing attacks were becoming more frequent, and the physicians had nothing more for it.
Balthazar had been without his medicine for three days now.
Buckle tucked the pouch into his coat pocket. He worried that if Balthazar fell ill while in captivity, the Founders would try to exploit his infirmity. If the Founders even had him. If Aphrodite wasn’t double-crossing them and setting up the Pneumatic Zeppelin for an ambush. Buckle shook his head. If Balthazar trusted Aphrodite, then he would trust Aphrodite.
Balthazar. Buckle shivered at the thought of losing Balthazar. Buckle was six years old when his parents died, and he had been raised as one of Balthazar’s sons, educated and trained to become a clan leader so, when the time came, he would be ready when called upon.
And the time had come.
Buckle loved Balthazar and Calypso dearly—as did the other seven orphans the strict but loving couple had adopted into their family. Most had been brought into the fold as infants or small children, such as Buckle and his sister Elizabeth, Max and Tyro, and Ivan. Sabrina had been adopted later in life, at the age of thirteen. The two youngest adoptees were a pair of twins named James and Jasmine, both rescued from the wreck of a downed privateer airship ten years before, at the age of three.
There was one more son, the eldest, and the only natural child of Balthazar and Calypso, the twenty-four-year-old Ryder, who was the heir apparent to Balthazar’s command. Ryder had been wounded defending his father on the night of his abduction at the Palisades Stronghold, and his injuries had landed him in the infirmary at the Devil’s Punchbowl, much to his great personal chagrin. Ryder had wanted desperately to take part in the rescue mission.
Buckle removed his top hat and placed it on the Lion’s Table before he turned and strode for the door. Kepler was waiting faithfully outside on the landing, he was sure.
It was his time. Romulus Buckle knew that he would rescue Balthazar and bring both him and the Pneumatic Zeppelin safely home. Of that he had no doubt. No doubt at all.
WHEN THE SKY FELL AT TEHACHAPI
THE PNEUMATIC ZEPPELIN HAD BEEN the jewel of the Imperial fleet until Buckle took her.
Up until that time nearly a year ago, Buckle had never considered trying to steal another clan’s airship; Crankshafts were not in the business of sky raiding—boarding an enemy ship usually meant heavy casualties—and while on the ground, the zeppelins were always well guarded at anchor in the heart of the clan strongholds. It would be perilous and costly to attempt to snatch one.
That was, until the nefarious and cowardly Imperials, without declaration of war and without warning, attacked the Crankshaft garrison at Tehachapi.
That was the night his sister, Elizabeth, was killed.
Buckle remembered the blitz the way one remembers a dream: vivid and clear in some parts, while vague and cloudy in others. It had been quiet as he walked from the council hall back to his quarters in the Crankshaft family compound. The moon glowed dully behind the clouds as always, and the cold air amplified every sound: the hiss of the torches and street lamps; the slow, rhythmic chunk, chunk of someone unseen but close by chopping firewood with an axe; the crunch of his own boots across the frozen crusts that lined the ruts in the street.
The compound was located beside the airfield, where five Crankshaft airships and a dozen independent tramps and traders floated at night anchor, very low, their gondolas no more than twenty feet above the ground, their whale-like bodies illuminated by legions of swirling lanterns dangling from the mooring towers and docking ropes. On the towering flank of each Crankshaft sky vessel loomed the red lion rampant, the symbol of the Crankshaft clan.
Buckle had been in a mood as foul as Martian mustard—he had just been outvoted by the clan treasurer and the majority of the council; they had dismissed his proposal to purchase another war zeppelin from the Steamweavers. The Crankshafts were merchants by nature, the council had said, and needed more small, long-distance trader vessels for the rubber trade, not ponderous gunships.
As Buckle walked past a small rock lodged in a frozen rut, he took a listless kick at it—he remembered the sharp whack at the toe of his boot quite clearly. It was then that he realized that huge objects were drifting silently under the dark clouds overhead.
Zeppelins.
Buckle’s logic told him a Crankshaft zeppelin was returning home. Many of the Crankshaft clan’s airships were deployed; Balthazar was away, with his flagship Khartoum, and so was his brother Horatio, captain of the gunship Waterloo, as well as most of the smaller traders and cutters. But none of them were due back any time soon. No messenger pigeons had come in heralding their early arrival. No docking crews had been assembled to mill about the hawsers at the mooring towers, the smoke from their pipes curling about their heads.
Fear caught in Buckle’s throat. Something was terribly wrong.
The Crankshafts were not at war with anyone. Balthazar, the great soldier and diplomat, had done his work well.
A sledgehammer wall of air, spitting particles of dust and ice, nearly knocked Buckle off his feet. The big blackbang bomb—which had fallen in the alley behind the smithy—belched a deep wave of roiling black smoke, swallowing him up, choking him. Buckle ran—his memory of this part was hazy, but he remembered running, sprinting at full speed, though he could not see more than three feet ahead of him, running to get to the airships. He was the chief navigator aboard the Bromhead, an armed trader, and he had to get to her. He had to help get her into the air. Explosions rocked the earth and walloped him from side to side. Muted flashes lit up the murk as if he were inside a thunderstorm. Figures scrambled past him in the smoke, but he could not make out who anyone was; their shouts pierced the muffling vapors, sometimes yelling orders, sometimes screaming the names of children.
Buckle wheezed. His smoke-tortured lungs threatened to burst, but he kept on running. He stumbled into a gap of clear air. Brilliant flashes—the bombs and the defenders’ phosphorus flares—shocked his eyes. He saw the docked Crankshaft war zeppelin, the Victory, a sitting duck tethered to its mooring tower, catch fire. He stopped, staring, gasping: a drowning man. The Victory’s hydrogen cells erupted in geysers of flame and it collapsed in upon itself, toppling toward the earth, its superstructure skeleton glowing white-hot as the skin burned away in red-edged ripples.
Move, Buckle thought. Move! He set off running, and, just before he plunged into another wave of smoke and airborne debris in front of him, he saw the awful flash of another exploding Crankshaft airship. It was the Bromhead. The fireball lit up the entire world, and he glimpsed—just for an instant—the clear outline of an attacking zeppelin above; on its flank he saw the symbol of the iron cross.
The Imperials.
When dawn broke over the smoking ruins of the Tehachapi stronghold, four of the five clan airships docked there—the Victory, Bromhead, Whirling Dervish, and Albert—were nothing more than smoldering heaps of twisted metal fallen to earth. Only the Gibraltar, a big armed trader, had miraculously survived, now a forlorn titan floating over the wrecks of her sisters. Forty-one Crankshaft clanspeople were dead, and 122 were wounded.
Calypso Cran
kshaft, wife to Balthazar and mother to his children, had been killed in the blitz. Buckle’s sister, Elizabeth, her room in the left wing of Balthazar’s house incinerated by an Imperial bomb, was one of a dozen whose bodies were consumed by the explosions. Nothing left to mourn. Nothing left for the funeral pyre.
Romulus Buckle was consumed by rage.
Pluteus Brassballs, himself seriously wounded, led the efforts to rescue trapped clansmen and make preparations to evacuate the now uninhabitable Tehachapi stronghold. Balthazar and Horatio, aboard the Khartoum and Waterloo, returned at best speed and arrived within two days. The eleven remaining Crankshaft airships, complemented by five hastily hired cargo tramps owned by the trader guilds—who ratcheted up their prices when they knew you had an emergency—were loaded, and the entire clan relocated to the garrison at the Devil’s Punchbowl to the south.
Although he preferred to always negotiate terms of peace and trade, Balthazar was no shrinking violet when it came to battle. The Crankshaft clan now was vulnerable, and every other clan knew it. He was convinced that the best defense was high aggression: he immediately began formulating a counterstrike against the Imperials. Even as the wounded Crankshaft clan was airborne between Tehachapi and the Devil’s Punchbowl, the airship infirmaries packed with bleeding wounded, the cold Castle deck of the Khartoum a morgue where the wrapped bodies of twenty-nine clanspeople, including Calypso, lay, Balthazar called the surviving council members and commanders into his quarters to discuss an immediate and daring counterstrike.
“Yes, our clan is seriously crippled,” Balthazar said. “But this is a moment in which we must show the caliber of our resolve. Because if anyone believes that we can no longer defend ourselves, we shall soon be overrun.”
Romulus Buckle & the City of the Founders (The Chronicles of the Pneumatic Zeppelin, Book One) Page 12
