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

by Richard Ellis Preston Jr.

  Buckle leaned against a bulkhead; he could feel the slaps of Founders bullets thudding against the Arabella’s wooden hull. He still clenched his saber in his hand; in the weak light he could see the long span of the blade, dull with its wash of blood. He would have to wipe it clean before he returned it to his scabbard—that was all the thought he gave the macabre souvenir.

  “Launch ascending!” Ivan shouted into the chattertube. “Fish us out of this mess, will you?”

  Buckle strode forward, unsteady on his feet as he bumped through the soldiers across the gently rocking deck. He worked his way forward to the empty bridge. Blackbang bullets smacked the glass nose panels here and there, sometimes cracking the dense glass.

  Something drew Buckle to the front starboard side of the nose. He peered down through one of the less rippled sections of glass, observing the waves of fog as they rapidly thickened over La Brea Square below. In the surrounding city he glimpsed the sparkle of glass rooftops, and the dark, hulking roundhouses that served the myriads of railroad tracks that coiled and gleamed in all directions. Directly beneath, he saw the great black lagoon of the tar pits, the amber domes, the scurry of people on the causeways, and the small orange pops of their weapons. For an instant, and only an instant, the fog broke, and he saw a dozen cavalrymen galloping along the causeway. The riders wore black cloaks and rode black horses—all except the leader, scarlet cloak whirling, whose horse, a powerful stallion, was all white.

  A dark presence cast a shadow over Buckle’s soul. A terrible, untouchable, unreasonable fear whispered to him.

  And then the fog closed in. La Brea Square vanished under a gray tide.

  A blackbang bullet hit the glass, smack in front of Buckle’s face, leaving a bull’s-eye crack.

  “Romulus! For crying out loud, get your arse away from the windows!” Sabrina snapped as she emerged from the hatchway.

  Of no mind to argue with Sabrina, Buckle turned and strode into the safe twilight of the hold. He took a deep breath. The stuffy atmosphere was still. The twisting ratchet of the heavy ropes creaked above. The groans of the wounded men sounded a heartrending chorus. Almost every single man was injured in some way, everyone coughing, grimed with soot, gunpowder, and sweat, bloody and exhausted. But they had saved Balthazar.

  Buckle brightened with relief and pride.

  They had saved Balthazar.

  “WE ARE NOT OUT OF TROUBLE YET, ANDROMEDA, MY DEAR—NOT BY A LONG SHOT.”

  AS SOON AS BUCKLE’S BOOTS hit the deck of the piloting gondola, he felt rejuvenated. It was exhilarating to be back on board his sky vessel, with the familiar metallic smell of the hot boilers, the oily scent of the engine lubricants, and the chemical odor of the envelope-fabric stiffeners in his nostrils, the ring of the chadburn in his ears, the airy swing of her great mass that rolled through every fiber of his body.

  The deck was on a steep rise: the Pneumatic Zeppelin was nose up, reaching for altitude, her engines and propellers pitched to full, roaring at maximum power. And now that the rescue expedition was aboard, with Balthazar, Andromeda, and Smelt his precious cargo, it was his responsibility to get them and his crew home alive; with all of his zeppelin-captain arrogance, he knew that he would.

  “Captain on deck!” Banerji announced.

  Kellie was there, hopping from paw to paw between De Quincey and Dunn, tail wagging a crazy jig, starting into a long, soulful howl of joy. Buckle tapped his chest and she bounded up into his arms. She was not a small dog, perhaps forty pounds, but Buckle did not have time to let her circle his feet and dance, so he opted to carry her. She licked his grimy cheek as he strode forward into the cockpit.

  Buckle eyed the sky through the nose dome—the Pneumatic Zeppelin had cleared the fog bank, and was now plowing through the clear layer of evening sky sandwiched between the cloud bank above and the sea of fog below. The interiors of the clouds glowed a weak silver white, illuminated from above by the hidden orb of the moon.

  Max turned from the bridge and Buckle saw her gaze snap to his bandaged head, the aqueous humor in her goggles glimmering faint green—concerned—even though the rest of her demeanor was pure business. But her eyes, her Martian eyes that he found both so transparent and so unreadable, seemed strangely sad as they scrutinized him. “Welcome aboard, Captain Buckle,” she announced. “We are bound north by northwest, all ahead standard at forty knots and accelerating, one hundred feet and climbing. No sign of pursuit.”

  “Very good, Max,” Buckle replied, handing Kellie to her as he strode forward. Kellie licked Max’s striped chin. Buckle knew that Max considered dog kisses undignified, and smiled inwardly as she gently lowered the dog to the deck.

  “Maintain battle stations,” Buckle said, planting his feet as his eyes scanned the sprawling emporium of bioluminescent instruments around him in the gondola. His bridge crew quickly reorganized around him: Max moved to the engineering station on his right, replacing Garcia; Sabrina stepped to the navigator’s post as Welly moved aside; Banerji hurried to the rear of the gondola, passing Nero at the ballast station.

  The cabin boy, Howard Hampton, stepped forward from alongside the hammergun turret, cradling Buckle’s extraordinary top hat. Howard’s eyes were wide and worried. “Are you hurt, Captain, sir?” Howard asked.

  “I am fine. Thanks, Howard,” Buckle answered, collecting his topper. “Let’s get the hell out of here, mates! What do we say?”

  “Aye!” the crew replied as one.

  Buckle tucked his hat on his head and plugged in. “Navigator. Set a course. Helm—north by northeast—straight home,” he ordered.

  “North by northeast, aye!” De Quincey said, spinning the rudder wheel hard to the right, letting the clattering spokes spin through his hands as the nose of the great airship slowly swung to starboard.

  “Aye!” Sabrina said, drawing lines across her map with ruler and pencil. “Setting course for the Devil’s Punchbowl.”

  “Three hundred feet altitude,” Buckle ordered.

  “Three hundred feet. Aye!” Nero repeated, turning the wheels on his ballast boards.

  Buckle watched the water compass on the binnacle. Once the swinging needle pointed north by northeast, De Quincey spun the rudder wheel back to neutral. “All ahead full,” Buckle ordered, switching the chadburn dial. He was going to get the Pneumatic Zeppelin out of there as fast as he could.

  “All ahead full,” the engine room answered, switching their dial to match the bridge dial.

  “Come starboard four degrees,” Sabrina said.

  De Quincey thumbed the rudder wheel to the right, until Buckle’s water compass slipped four ticks to the east.

  A heavy pair of boots rang down the staircase. It was Kepler, still carrying Lady Andromeda.

  “Lady Andromeda!” Buckle exclaimed. “You should be in sick bay. Kepler, take her immediately. Howard, show them the way.”

  Andromeda gathered her wonderful smile. The blood had been cleaned away from her face—though it still hung in coagulated smatterings in her hair—but she still looked frighteningly pale. “I shall place myself in the care of your good surgeon presently, Captain Buckle, but first I must thank all of you for the daring rescue that saved your Balthazar and I. I know you lost good people in the effort.”

  “Thank you,” Buckle said. “But we are not out of trouble yet, Andromeda, my dear—not by a long shot.”

  “Do not refer to Lady Andromeda as ‘my dear,’” Kepler said in a gruff but not unpleasant manner.

  Andromeda patted Kepler on the chest as one might pat a beloved horse. “No need to be a stickler, my stalwart Caliban. We are beyond formalities at the moment.” She returned her attention to Buckle. “I understand the nature of the situation, Captain, which is why I wished to express my gratitude to all of you now.”

  “You are quite welcome, Lady Andromeda,” Buckle said, with a respectful nod of his head.

  “Welcome for nothing!” Katzenjammer Smelt bellowed down the stairwell, marching down in his tall b
lack boots, halting alongside Kepler and Lady Andromeda, where he straightened his tunic with wrist-snapping tucks. “I will have you know, Lady Andromeda, that the Pneumatic Zeppelin is mine. It was stolen from me—stolen from me by Captain Buckle.”

  “All is fair in love and war, is it not, Chancellor?” Andromeda said.

  “We were not at war,” Smelt answered, glowering at Buckle. “Balthazar had engineered a nonaggression pact with my clan. Little did I know that it was no more than a smoke screen to obscure their blackhearted treachery.”

  “We can all argue at a later time. We are at battle stations now,” Buckle grumbled, watching the clouds below. “Clear the politicians from the bridge.”

  Howard jumped alongside Kepler and Andromeda. “Follow me to sick bay, please,” he said, climbing the stairwell. The Alchemists departed.

  Smelt scrutinized the black stripes on Max’s face. “A Martian? You have a Martian aboard my zeppelin?”

  Max raised one eyebrow. “Katzenjammer Smelt, I presume?” she said dryly.

  “Mister Banerji,” Buckle said, drawing his pistol from his belt and tossing it to the apprentice navigator. “Take this sidearm and accompany Chancellor Smelt to the library. Remain with him there until you are relieved.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Banerji said, tucking the pistol into his belt as he stepped up to Smelt.

  “Library? What library? This is an Imperial ship of war,” Smelt grumbled. “This is my flagship!”

  “Lead the way, Chancellor,” Banerji said, motioning for Smelt to take to the stairs.

  “Wait!” Sabrina shouted, stunned, peering down her drift telescope.

  “What is it?” Buckle asked.

  Sabrina’s response was incredulous. “The fog bank…it’s opening…a gap just opened directly beneath us. I can see the ground!”

  Buckle stared down at the observation window under his feet and, sure enough, he could see black earth appearing under a massive, expanding chasm in the fog bank.

  “There are train tracks, a locomotive…” Sabrina said. Suddenly she stiffened with such a jerk that her boots squeaked on the deck. “Cannon flash! A big cannon flash!”

  Buckle saw the locomotive: at this height it looked like a black beetle speeding along the tracks, spewing a billowing trail of gray steam. And he saw the huge muzzle flash. “Evasive maneuvers!” he yelled.

  De Quincey lunged into the rudder wheel, spinning it to port with all of his might.

  The lumbering Pneumatic Zeppelin responded well, making a slow bank to port, but she wasn’t built for quick maneuvering.

  The cannonball came at them with a shriek. Everyone cringed.

  “Brace for impact!” Buckle shouted. He saw the cannonball coming, shimmering with white phosphorus that flowed behind it in a sparkling tail; it looked more like a meteor than a huge ball of iron. It struck somewhere amidships with a severe rip of canvas, a blast of shattering wood, and the screech of shearing metal.

  No explosion followed. All Buckle could hear were the noises of the healthy engines and propellers churning away.

  “That was one hell of a cannonball—a hundred-pounder at the very least,” Sabrina muttered, leaning into the hard left turn of the airship, her eyes lifted to the gondola roof like everyone else. “If the stockings had not held, I wager we would not be here anymore.”

  “Well,” Welly gasped. “We got lucky as a—”

  A massive explosion cut him off.

  A hydrogen cell somewhere in the airship exploded, detonating with the apocalyptic, thunderous whoosh of burning gas. Buckle saw the fog and clouds light up momentarily illuminated by the fiery geyser that had just erupted out of the port flank of his airship.

  The force of the blast rippled along the rigid frame of the Pneumatic Zeppelin and threw everyone in the piloting gondola to starboard. Had he not already established a firm grip on the binnacle, Buckle would have been dashed to the deck like nearly everyone else. Two pressure meters on the hydrogen board burst in fiery pops of splintering glass.

  Nero lunged back to his station. “Compartment nine no reading! Hydrogen cells sixteen and seventeen pressures at zero! Fire teams responding!”

  “Seal all feeder valves to compartment nine,” Buckle ordered. He could see De Quincey and Dunn straining as they fought their shuddering rudder and elevator wheels. The Pneumatic Zeppelin groaned along the length of her great body and pitched over dangerously to her port side.

  The whole world rolled to the left.

  Buckle, clambering to keep his balance on the tilting deck, leaned into his chattertube mouthpiece. “All hands! Emergency stations! All hands! Emergency stations!” he yelled. Welly wound up the crank on the klaxon siren.

  Buckle jumped beside De Quincey, throwing his strength into the rudder wheel. “Max!” Buckle yelled.

  Max jumped across the deck to lend her strength, as they tried to force the wheel to the right.

  Buckle pulled his left hand free and slammed the chadburn handle forward. “All ahead flank!” he yelled into the chattertube. He heard no response, but he knew from the vibrations of the deck that the engineers had followed his order, firing the engines up to dangerously high, and unsustainable, levels of power.

  The ship still continued to roll to port. Why could he not compensate? Why could they not swing the elevators and rudder around to counter the drag and bring the airship level again? The Pneumatic Zeppelin was foundering, starting to fall—the blow to her left flank must have been catastrophic enough to cripple both her equilibrium and positive lift; Buckle needed lift and he needed it now.

  “Blow odd water tanks one through twenty-seven!” Buckle ordered.

  “Blowing water ballast, odds one through twenty-seven!” Nero shouted, whirling control wheels on the ballast board.

  The ballast scuppers roared with waterfalls outside. Buckle felt the airship lighten, start to rise. “Damage report!”

  It was then that the Pneumatic Zeppelin shook with a mighty groan, shivering so hard it rattled Buckle’s teeth, and plunged toward the fogbound earth with such a violent spin that Buckle was suspended in a weightless state.

  Buckle knew that he only had a few seconds to act.

  THE LOCOMOTIVE CANNON

  THE UNIVERSE CAME UNHINGED IN the dark. Buckle planted his boots against the bulkhead as Max clenched the rudder wheel with him, her lithe body pressed hard against his side. The Pneumatic Zeppelin spun, blurring the eyes under a cacophony of noise, her superstructure groaning, spars screeching, wires snapping asunder and switching through the girders and firewalls, ropes parting with violent pops, lanterns lurching at oil-splashing angles, their flames staggering. The bridge crew, pulling themselves back to their instrument panels, hung on for dear life.

  Buckle fought off vertigo, his muscles screaming, as he, De Quincey, and Max strained as one mass, trying to steer the ship in the direction of the spin—it was prudent to recover by turning with the zeppelin’s own momentum and catapult out of it, rather than tear the fragile airship to pieces by forcing it back against its own spiral.

  “Uncontrolled spin!” Sabrina shouted. “Two hundred feet and falling! one hundred and fifty!”

  “Null out the turn!” Buckle howled, shaking off a sense of blacking out.

  “Helm is not responding!” De Quincey shouted back.

  “We may have lost a stabilizer!” Max yelled the words in Buckle’s ear, but now they barely registered over the roar of the falling zeppelin. Max jumped to assist Dunn on the elevator wheel.

  “She shall not come around in time!” Buckle answered. They had no altitude. It would only be a few seconds before the airship crashed to the fogbound earth or, more likely, tore itself apart on the way down. Buckle was surprised that the hydrogen cell explosion had not already blown them all to bits.

  The fog bank rushed up to meet them. With his engines near to bursting and his propellers spinning beyond maximum revolutions, Buckle had no more power to apply. But he had to regain lift or nothing else would
matter. “Jettison all ballast!” he shouted. “Blow all tanks!”

  “Blow all tanks, aye!” Nero replied, yanking down a series of levers on the ballast board. “Blowing all ballast across the board!”

  “One hundred feet!” Sabrina shouted.

  The Pneumatic Zeppelin plunged into the fog bank. The world outside went gray and blank. Buckle, his stomach rolling, saw little more than a vibrating whirl of bright green boil. He heard the surging roar of the ballast water pouring out of the scuppers, and felt their spray soak the air. The water smelled like metal. Relieved of the weight of her water reserves, the zeppelin’s descent was arrested; the hard yank of gravity nearly drove Buckle to his knees.

  “All ballast tanks, main and emergency, empty, Captain!” Nero shouted.

  “Eighty feet!” Sabrina reported.

  All water-ballast tanks dumped, and their fall had slowed—but they were still falling.

  “All crew engage oxygen gear! I repeat: all crew engage oxygen gear!” Sabrina shouted into the chattertube.

  The crew would be fumbling with their gas masks and oxygen lines now. The bridge crew did not have time.

  “Nero—flood to maximum hydro across the board,” Buckle shouted. The order could prove fatal—flooding all of the gas cells to their highest pressure while he had a fire on board was asking for it—but he had no choice: going down to shipwreck in the mustard promised certain death.

  “Emergency hydrogen flood!” Nero said, manhandling the master levers as he opened the feeder valves. “Across the board, aye!”

  “Sixty feet,” Sabrina reported. “Descent is slowing.”

  Buckle leaned into his chattertube hood. “Kill all lamps! Kill all lamps!” If he was going to pump hydrogen into compromised gas cells and burning decks, at the very least he would have all of the lantern flames aboard extinguished. The fires in the overworked furnaces were another matter altogether.

  “Killing lamps, aye!” Welly said. He spun a copper-handled hand-crank mechanism that lowered snuffers inside the piloting gondola’s lanterns, smothering the flames, leaving the crew in a muted darkness where the boil glowed a wild, primordial green.