Romulus Buckle & the City of the Founders (The Chronicles of the Pneumatic Zeppelin, Book One)

by Richard Ellis Preston Jr.

  “The lock is already broken!” Sabrina bellowed, planting her mouth as close as she could to Buckle and Kepler’s heads. “The hatch door is seated tight, but all we have to do is pry it open! Heave!”

  Buckle and Kepler threw all of their might against the crowbar. The cumbersome door creaked in protest and came unstuck, shifting open just a hair, squirting a pop of powdery rust, instantly snatched away by the wind. Buckle groaned, his muscles quivering, but Kepler’s brawn was making the real difference. Once the hatch portal was cracked an inch—fortunately it swung with the wind current rather than against it—a crowd of Ballblaster and Alchemist hands grabbed hold of the rim and pulled it open.

  The hatchway led into total darkness. Sabrina immediately jumped in.

  Buckle followed Sabrina with pistol and musket. In the bouncing light of their helmet lamps he found himself in a narrow cylindrical tank about forty feet long, its rusting walls pulsing with cockroaches. His boots sloshed through an inch-deep slush of old sewage, slime, and floating chunks of what looked like Spam, but the vile appearance of the tank paled in comparison to the vileness of its smell.

  “Perhaps we should have kept our gas masks on a little bit longer,” Buckle whispered, fighting the urge to retch.

  “As you may have guessed, we’re in the old sewage system,” Sabrina replied, apparently not much affected by the stench. “The Founders built much of their new city underground, including the prison. The sewers and subway tunnels of old Los Angeles passing through here were all sealed off. But somebody cracked this one.”

  “I’m going to have to burn these boots,” Buckle grumbled, but he was musing over Sabrina’s spilling of a little inside information. He would bet a bucket of hydrogen she would be willing to tell him everything if he asked, but that would violate Balthazar’s sacred code safeguarding his adopted children’s pasts. Buckle would never ask.

  And what in blue blazes was a subway?

  Buckle glanced back. Kepler was behind him and the tank beyond was filling up with headlamp beams as the team filed in, each member experiencing their own private dismay at the putrid soup lapping around their ankles.

  When Buckle and Sabrina reached the far end of the tank, Sabrina pressed her boot against the old access hatch and shoved it wide open. Buckle was so close behind her that he bumped her rump with his helmet as she clambered out. He paused, allowing her to get clear, and then swung out the opening to drop a few feet to the floor, his boots leaving rude splatters on the concrete.

  Buckle took a deep snort of stale air to clear his nostrils. He scanned the new chamber with his headlamp. It was a small, windowless room, a room of the old kind, a utilitarian cement box. Two identical sewage tanks loomed alongside the one they had just emerged from. Hundreds of pipes of various sizes ribbed every inch of the walls, although some had large sections missing, the victims of Scavengers. A desk with an instrument panel and a computer screen, the weird electric machines long since dead, stood in the middle of the room, buried under dirt and dust. A lone wooden chair, an ugly, prefabricated piece, sat forlornly in a corner. The door was large and metal, and most probably locked from the outside.

  Sabrina handed her breastplate, helmet, coat, sword, and map case to Buckle. “Hold on to these for me, please, Captain,” she said, retaining only her pistol, tucked into her belt. “I’ll be back in a moment.”

  Sabrina clambered up onto the computer desk and, stretching to her full height, cat-jumped up to a ceiling vent and shoved it aside. She pulled her body up through the hole until her boots disappeared. Tiny avalanches of dust fell onto the computer.

  Kepler, freshly escaped from the sewage tank and smelling like it, arrived at Buckle’s side; he peered up at the hole and grunted.

  The little room filled up rapidly as trooper after trooper, headlamps glowing, climbed out of the tank. Wolfgang appeared and, after some difficulties getting the Owl’s large head through the hatchway, managed to get both of them down to the crowded floor.

  “Well, I’ll be potted! What manner of dead end is this?” Pluteus exclaimed, eyeing the items in Buckle’s arms. “And where is Lieutenant Serafim?”

  “Bounced up and out, General,” Buckle said, pointing at the ceiling.

  Pluteus gave him a serious glare.

  The chamber echoed with the ka-chank of a heavy metal bolt being slid aside outside the door. Two more chur-kersnicks rattled and then stopped.

  The door swung open with a monumental squeal of rusty hinges, and there stood Sabrina, hands on her hips, her whole body caked with crumbly dust. A soft, weird illumination flowed in around her, a bluish-white, fluttering light accompanied by a buoyant hiss.

  “Welcome to the City of the Founders,” Sabrina said.

  PRISON BY GASLIGHT

  SABRINA, HAVING HASTILY DONNED HER coat, armor, and sword belt, led the way out of the old maintenance room with her pistol at the ready. Turning to the right, they emerged into an airy passageway of smooth blue-gray stone reinforced at intervals with timber supports. The air seemed very still after the wooly gale in the sewage tunnel; it was slightly warm with a sweet, earthy smell. But by far the most striking elements were the light fixtures, oval glass lamps affixed to the walls by iron sconces, each hissing quietly as it percolated with a large blue flame.

  “I wish we had a moment to investigate these lamps,” Wolfgang whispered. “What is this fabulous source of illumination? It seems to be some sort of flammable gas—but it could not be hydrogen, could it? No, hydrogen is far too scarce and expensive. It has to be something else.”

  “Silence,” Scorpius grumped at Wolfgang.

  Sabrina knew what the gas was. But she was not about to weather even more suspicious glances by volunteering inside information.

  “Lamps off,” Pluteus, limping behind Buckle with Kepler, ordered in a low voice. There was no need for the helmet lanterns now.

  Sabrina pressed the extinguisher lever on the side of her helmet’s lamp casing, hearing a click as a pair of caliper dampers stamped out the wick inside. With all of the assault team’s orange lamps doused, the corridor took on the bright, ice-blue-edged illumination of the Founders’ mysterious gas lamps.

  “It isn’t far,” Sabrina whispered back to Pluteus.

  Pluteus nodded. “Eyes up, boys. Eyes up and keep your powder dry,” he said. “Advance guard, forward.” Two Ballblasters pushed forward to flank Sabrina on each side.

  Sabrina cautiously turned left into another well-lit corridor that looked identical to the first. They passed a pair of yellow canaries in a hanging iron cage; the little creatures flitted about, their black eyes wary, and their dismayed chirps made more noise than Sabrina would have liked. At twenty yards she made another right turn, leading them deeper into the labyrinth of empty stone passageways. But now they were passing closed wooden doors—entrances to storage rooms.

  Sabrina took a sharp left turn around the next corner and ran straight into a Founders jailer—literally bashing headfirst into the young fellow, knocking a bowl of pasty, gray gruel out of his hands.

  Sabrina lunged at the stunned jailer before he could react, sweeping his legs out from under him as he staggered backward with gruel splashed across his black tunic. She dropped on his chest with her knife pressed against his throat.

  “Not a sound, you hear me, fogsucker?” Sabrina snarled in a whisper, a splotch of gruel dripping from her cheek. “Or I skewer you like a rat.”

  The unfortunate jailer—a gangly, pimply kid who could not have been more than sixteen years old—stared up at Sabrina with eyes as big as saucers. He was breathing so hard that Sabrina had to lift her rear from his chest or be uncomfortably bounced. He nodded his head cautiously, wary of the razor-sharp blade resting against his windpipe.

  “Damn our hides!” Pluteus growled under his breath as he turned the corner. “Get him up! Get him up!”

  Buckle and Kepler helped Sabrina drag the limp jailer to his feet while Sergeant Scully disarmed him, removing his pistol fr
om its holster. The kid was tall, wearing a black uniform with silver piping on the collar and sleeves. Festooned on his cap was a silver phoenix, the symbol of the Founders clan. Tears of terror pooled in his pale blue eyes as gruel dribbled around the silver buttons on his chest.

  Pluteus stepped up to the kid and seemed to loom over him, even though the kid was a good five inches taller than he was. “Balthazar Crankshaft—is he here?”

  “Ye-ye-yes, sir,” the kid jailer answered, his voice high and shaking as if he only had a pinhole to speak through. “T-t-turn right at the end of this passage…then, the cell blocks, you, ah, you—”

  “I know how to get to the cell blocks,” Sabrina interrupted, slipping her knife back into its sheath. “Is Balthazar in cell twenty-four?”

  “Yes. Twenty-four. It’s twenty-four. On the central corridor. Cell twenty-four.” The kid jailer gasped.

  “Your keys,” Pluteus said, and nodded to Scully.

  Scully drew his knife. The kid jailer winced; sweat poured down his red-dotted face in rivers and his eyes begged for mercy. Scully waved the blade in the kid’s face, then leaned down and sliced open his belt, removing his key ring. The kid looked like he was about to faint.

  “Which key?” Pluteus demanded. “Balthazar’s cell. Which key is it?”

  “I don’t have it,” the kid jailer stammered quickly, his terror surging. “I don’t. Please…only the master of the watch, only the master of the watch has those keys, the keys for the special prisoners. I don’t have it. I swear. I swear.”

  Pluteus looked like he might bash the quivering kid’s head in.

  But it was Scorpius, barging into the fray, who truly had murder in his eyes. “Where is Andromeda Pollux?” he snapped.

  “Who?” the kid jailer answered, blinking with fright.

  “Andromeda! Andromeda Pollux!” Scorpius continued, managing to bellow with a whisper. “The Alchemist! What cell is she in?”

  “I don’t know her! I swear. I swear,” the kid jailer mumbled, beginning to cry. “I swear it!” he gasped, swallowing with a loud, gargled choke.

  A low rumble rose in Scorpius’s throat, his words coming with a slow, fury-dripping menace, his gritted teeth white against his dark skin. “For the last time. Where is Andromeda Pollux?”

  “She might be in one of the special cells,” the kid jailer said, talking fast, talking for his life. “Those prisoners are handled by officers. I don’t know who is in those cells. They’re above my pay grade. I’m just a jailer. But I do know that there is somebody in there. They take meals in.”

  Pluteus carefully placed his hand on Scorpius’s shoulder and pulled him back. “We’ll find her, Scorpius,” Pluteus said. “She is here and we will find her.”

  Scorpius allowed Pluteus to move him away, but he never took his burning stare off the frightened jailer. Sabrina hoped that Pluteus was right. If it turned out that Andromeda wasn’t there—that Buckle had been misleading in his information—the Alchemists would become infuriated, and there was no telling how that messy situation might play itself out.

  “There’s another one, another important prisoner!” the kid jailer jabbered, offering up everything he had. “Katzenjammer Smelt. The Imperial. He’s in cell twenty-six, just south of Balthazar. I can take you to both of them. I can!”

  Sabrina saw Buckle jerk, his blood suddenly up. The mere utterance of the name Katzenjammer Smelt, the Imperial clan chancellor, would have pierced him to the core. Smelt was the man who had engineered the Tehachapi Blitz. Smelt was the man whose treachery had killed Elizabeth and Calypso. Their blood was fresh on his murdering hands.

  “I say we leave Smelt to rot,” Buckle muttered, nearly choking on his own tongue, so great was the rage he was forced to throttle down.

  The Ballblasters crowded in the hallway responded with a soft chorus of “Aye.”

  “Or we take him home and hang him,” Scully said.

  “That is enough!” Pluteus barked softly. “Now we need to move!”

  Sabrina grabbed the kid jailer by the collar. “Quickly, now—where is the master of the watch?” she asked.

  The kid jailer’s lips shook. “She should be at the front. In the anteroom. At the main entrance.”

  “Should be?” Sabrina snapped.

  “She’s there. I just saw her. She’s there!” the kid jailer sobbed, eyes flicking, noticing fearfully that Sergeant Scully had stepped behind him. “She’s there…please…I swear. And sh-sh-she has the keys. I swear!”

  “Okay,” Sabrina said, patting his cheek in a kindly fashion. “Now that wasn’t so bad, was it?”

  There was a hollow thunk, as Sergeant Scully whacked the back of the kid jailer’s skull with the butt of his own pistol; the kid’s eyes rolled up white and he dropped like a sack of ballast. Scully caught him and propped his unconscious body against the wall.

  “They are all here, I am certain,” Pluteus said. “All three: Balthazar, Andromeda, and the bastard Smelt. But we have only one heavy explosive left. We are going to need the keys from the master of the watch.”

  “This little glitch with the jailer may prove fortunate for us, Pluteus,” Sabrina said. “I have a plan.”

  THE RELUCTANT VOLUNTEER

  WHY DO I ALWAYS HAVE to be the one to volunteer for these crazy things? Buckle thought as he strode, alone and in plain sight, down the middle of the main prison corridor, heading for the front doors. Well, you tell everyone that you feast on danger, don’t you? You’re a risk taker, a peril raker, an iron-eyed troublemaker. You don’t just embrace risk, you charge down its throat with a grin. Shut up, he told himself.

  At least the wretched Kepler could not hound his heels up here.

  The main prison corridor was a wide passageway one hundred yards in length, which divided the two central cell blocks. Lit by rows of gas lamps flickering along each wall, it was an oppressive rectangular tunnel of stone and shadows, where canary pairs in the occasional birdcage provided the only touches of color and movement. According to the kid jailer’s frantic account, Balthazar and Katzenjammer Smelt were being held in the cells on Buckle’s left, which had heavy wooden doors plated with copper, and small windows with iron bars. And Buckle desperately hoped that Andromeda was in one of the special cells on his right. Of these, he could see nothing beyond big iron doors set at regular intervals in the stone wall.

  Buckle wanted to look in the cells—no one was visible at the windows—and he suddenly feared that the Founders might have beaten Balthazar so badly he might not be able to stand.

  But at least Balthazar was here. Buckle’s racing heart leapt with relief. They would free him, no question, and the Crankshaft clan would be saved. It looked like Aphrodite, Balthazar’s mysterious spy inside the city, had given them good information.

  Buckle’s boots pinched. They really pinched. And they were not his boots—they belonged to the kid jailer. He was wearing the kid’s uniform. It was snug, but it fit him fairly well, with its long black tunic studded with two rows of silver buttons and loose-fitting black trousers. But the kid had tiny feet, and Buckle had been forced to stuff his big paddles into the little boots until it felt like his toes were folded under his heels.

  Buckle tucked the kid jailer’s hat down as low as he could on his forehead. Don’t hobble, he told himself.

  This was Sabrina’s plan. Dressed as a jailer, Buckle was going to stroll up to the front desk and confiscate the keys from the master of the watch at the point of a pistol. Easy as falling off a zeppelin, right?

  But why couldn’t the kid jailer have been a short, stocky fellow whose uniform could not fit him?

  Buckle’s feet hurt all the way up to his shoulders.

  At least he had not run into any more guards.

  “You! Hold there!” A gravelly voice, driven to a tremulous pitch, pierced the air immediately on Buckle’s left.

  Buckle stopped, his heart skipping a beat, his hand whipping down to the butt of the pistol in his holster.

  “You
!” The gravelly voice had a deeper, darker tone this time.

  Buckle slowly looked to the left. A long arm, seemingly longer than natural, a gnarled, knobby limb that was no more than skin glued on bone, had been thrust out a cell window, the index finger extended, pointing at him. Beyond the arm, above a sunken clavicle, was a face, buried in shadows and a tangled shock of gray hair and beard. It was the face of an old man, his exact age difficult to tell. His eyes, wild and bright as a crazed animal’s, bulged unnaturally large and round inside their sunken sockets.

  “Do I know you?” the old man mumbled, his lower lip quivering.

  “Be quiet!” Buckle whispered harshly.

  “What? No one quiets old Shadrack! The blackguards knocked out half my teeth, and still no one quiets old Shadrack! I sing. I sing!” Shadrack rattled his window bars, getting agitated and getting louder.

  “Fine. Sure,” Buckle said quickly, soothingly. “Sing. Just stop jabbering.”

  “The roaches in the mush—they speak and I listen,” Shadrack said. “And the clouds speak. Beautiful voices. But if your head is not in it, you lose them. They sink away, whispers in the hurly-burly.”

  “Whispering is good. How about we whisper?” Buckle glanced down the corridor in the direction of the front anteroom. Sooner or later the guards were going to respond to their prisoner’s ravings.

  Narrowing his lids over his bulbous eyes, Shadrack shot his arm out and pointed again. “You fear them, too. You do not belong here…you do not belong here!” He began to utter a low, tremulous howl.

  “Hush!”

  To Buckle’s surprise, Shadrack went silent. He slammed his face into the gap between the window bars, framed by his bony hands. “Are you here to save me? Are you here to rescue poor old Shadrack? Are you an angel?”

  “Romulus!” Pluteus whispered from the darkness of an adjoining corridor twenty feet behind, where the entire assault team crouched in wait. “Move!”

  Buckle looked at Shadrack. The old man’s face had gone soft, the eyes innocent and plaintive as a puppy’s. “Yes. I came to save you,” Buckle whispered. “But you have to be quiet, you hear me?”