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

by Richard Ellis Preston Jr.

  It took a lot to make Max feel embarrassed, but with Scorpius, Fogg, and Nightingale leaning in on top of them, this came close.

  Andromeda drew her hand back, folding her long fingers into her palm. “Make me a promise, Lieutenant,” she said.

  “Lady Andromeda, with all due respect, I need to go,” Max replied.

  Andromeda’s eyes fluttered, the drowse of morphine soaking through her veins. She whispered something. Max leaned forward and turned her sensitive ear toward Andromeda’s mouth.

  “Never let the world hurt you too much,” Andromeda breathed.

  Max looked at Andromeda; her eyes were now closed, the lids a shade paler than her cheeks, the skin as fine as porcelain. “I do not,” Max whispered, then stood up and replaced her goggles.

  “Now if you will excuse me, I have urgent work to do,” Fogg announced, motioning for Scorpius, Kepler, and Max to step away from Andromeda’s bedside.

  Max turned on her heel and strode to the infirmary door, flipping the switch to refill her goggles with their soothing liquid. She was impatient to begin her vital assessment of the Pneumatic Zeppelin’s damages. Her short visits with Pluteus and Andromeda had set her back four minutes, by her calculations, and set her insides in a knot.

  But somehow she knew that it was not time wasted.

  THE ZOOKEEPER

  HIGH ON THE EAGLE DECK catwalk, where the roof of the Pneumatic Zeppelin’s canvas envelope rippled overhead, and the hulking gray backs of the gas cells loomed at each quarter, Buckle felt a little bit relieved: there were no fires up top, no flames visible along the entire length of the deck.

  The pale, swirling yellow light of Buckle’s firefly lantern glowed on the copper lattices of the self-sealing stockings that sheathed each and every gasbag aboard the Pneumatic Zeppelin. The stockings, formally known as Abraham Sangster’s Hydrogen Cell Self-Sealing Apparatus, were massive jackets of thin rubber, designed to instantly close up any hole in the event of a breach, thus preventing the highly volatile mixing of oxygen with the hydrogen gas. The miles of metal latticework spiderwebbing the rubber skins operated on well-oiled gears ratcheted up to high tension, and were so taut that they often emitted a low, vibrating hum.

  The stockings had not sealed properly when the Founders cannonball had struck compartment nine, but Buckle was not surprised—the mechanisms had been overwhelmed. The damn ball was the size of a hog, perhaps one hundred pounds, requiring a monster cannon far too heavy for even the biggest zeppelins to carry.

  Buckle stepped down the catwalk to the hatchway of the compartment-nine blast shield, slowing as the cold torrent of air pouring in from the sky battered him. He peered into the compartment: the section of the Eagle deck catwalk spanning the chasm was melted, barely more than a skeleton of its original self. Great chimneys of steam ballooned up from the extinguished fires below and vanished when they hit the slipstream. The envelope skin overhead was completely gone, the fluttering edges of the blast hole doused to black, only occasionally gasping out a few handfuls of embers into the night sky with its endless blanket of clouds.

  Buckle did not have a good view of the ground. Surely they must be clear of the shoreline and over open water by now. He needed to return to the bridge. He turned from the wind-battered hatch and strode toward the companionway stairwell.

  Buckle halted, surprised by the sudden appearance of the zookeeper, Osprey Fowler, on the catwalk; he had not seen Osprey at first. She was thin and lanky beneath a long leather coat loaded with instruments of animal husbandry, and often decorated with white-green splashes of guano. She possessed an olive-skinned, short-nosed beauty, a beguiling loveliness that she hid, lurking under her broad-brimmed hat, goggles, and the cascading tangle of brown hair she allowed to hide much of her face.

  “Aye, Captain Buckle,” Osprey said as Buckle approached, her goggles glowing with the yellow swirl of Buckle’s fireflies, a pink-headed pigeon hopping from one foot to another on her shoulder, scrutinizing Buckle with one eye and then the other. “The animals, Captain, the fire—it frightens them, makes them restless. Did you see that all the wugglebats are gone? They flew away.”

  “Like rats fleeing a sinking sea vessel, eh?” Buckle said. “I hope they don’t know something we don’t.”

  Osprey shook her head. “They are clinging to the outer envelope. The colony will return once they realize the fires are out.”

  “Do you need something, Osprey?” Buckle asked, both annoyed and intrigued. Osprey rarely spoke at length to anyone, obviously more comfortable with her animals than people. Such was often the hallmark of her strange breed. Every zeppelin had a zookeeper aboard, a crew member who was an expert in homing pigeons and the menagerie of shipboard beasts that the airship carried—fireflies, goats, dogs, cats, chickens, falcons, horses, and so on.

  “Oh, no, my Captain,” Osprey replied. “I need nothing. What you need is for someone to tell you that you have been lied to.”

  “Lied to?” Buckle repeated stupidly, glaring at Osprey. He did not have time for her riddles. It struck him as very strange for her to pick such a moment to come to him, to be speaking to him this way at all. But despite her oddness, Buckle had never witnessed a time when either her intelligence or her judgment failed her. “I don’t have time for puzzles, Osprey,” Buckle announced, preparing to sidestep her.

  “Captain…” Osprey said. She stepped in front of Buckle and planted her hand, the small fingers thick with rings of various metals, on his chest. He stopped cold. Osprey had never attempted to block him, or even touch him before. There was one more element to Osprey Fowler that was unnerving: although she would never speak of it, Balthazar was certain that she had once had an audience with the Oracle—the mythical being whom many sought and few ever found—and was told something of the future.

  “Who has lied to me, Zookeeper?” Buckle asked. He would give her one quick opportunity to spit out what she wanted to say.

  Osprey removed her hand from Buckle’s chest and lifted her goggles over the brim of her hat, revealing her startling eyes, the brown irises speckled with gold flecks, luring eyes that always felt eerily like some sort of trap to Buckle, like a diamond resting in the center of a spider’s web. Those eyes locked on to his. “Your sister is alive, Captain. Elizabeth lives.”

  A snake twisted in Buckle’s throat. The idea of a false hope made him angry. “How do you know this?” he snapped. “Elizabeth died at Tehachapi.”

  “Her body was never found.”

  “She was incinerated like many of the others. In the fires.”

  Osprey leaned forward, managing to whisper despite the howl of wind between them. “Elizabeth did not die. She was taken.” As she spoke she pressed a small object into the palm of Buckle’s hand. “And Balthazar knows.”

  “Balthazar?” Buckle mumbled. He looked down at the cylinder in his hand—it was a pigeon-message scroll—and when he looked up, Osprey was gone. He was alone, the gusting wind pulling at him, rippling the canvas above, swinging the buglight on its creaking handle as he held it.

  His sister, Elizabeth, alive? This was not possible. And if she was alive, and Balthazar knew, what reason could Balthazar have for not telling him? And why, of all moments to pick, would the mysteriously oddball Osprey Fowler choose to tell him this secret now? Buckle jammed the scroll into his coat pocket and jumped to the stairwell. He cast the zookeeper’s incendiary whispers from his mind; he would disentangle her mystery later. The Pneumatic Zeppelin needed his full attention right now.

  Buckle arrived on the Castle deck as Ivan, assisted by Faraday, was climbing into a harness to rappel down into the doused compartment vault, now a steaming chimney, with hot smoke and vapors tornadoing up and out of the gusting hole overhead.

  “Fires are out as far as we can tell from here, Cap’n!” Ivan yelled. “Fire teams are on patrol. I’m going down to tamp out a few hot spots.”

  “Good work,” Buckle answered. “I shall be on the bridge.”

  Suddenly the
warning klaxon wound up to a wail, hand-cranked into a chattertube hood in the command gondola.

  “Battle stations! Battle stations!” Sabrina’s voice roared from the chattertube speakers. “Steampipers below! Lower antiboarding nets! All hands prepare to repel boarders! I repeat. Steampipers below! All hands prepare to repel boarders!”

  STEAMPIPERS

  BUCKLE LOOKED UP AT THE sky. Nothing but moonlit clouds loomed beyond the towering rip in the Pneumatic Zeppelin’s envelope. He heard the deep rattle of the antiboarding nets being lowered far below.

  “Steampipers—I’ll be damned,” Ivan said, tossing his lowering harness aside and checking on his wugglebat, Pushkin, who had popped his head up from his breast pocket.

  “Aye,” Buckle said. Steampipers were soldiers with steam-engine contraptions strapped to their backs that made them capable of flight, at least for short periods of time. They were very effective at boarding low-flying airships. The Imperial clan had steampipers; it was not a surprise to Buckle that the Founders had them as well.

  “Ivan. Get below and get your men armed,” Buckle said.

  “Aye. Good luck, Cap’n,” Ivan answered, hurrying away with Faraday.

  Buckle decided to stay where he was. Steampipers preferred assaulting zeppelins from the top, where there were fewer defenders, gaining a foothold and the advantage of the high ground for their battle with the crew. And once they saw the hole in the side of the Pneumatic Zeppelin, they would most surely make it a focal point of their attack.

  Buckle reloaded his pistol, ripping the top off a cartridge and pouring the blackbang powder into the barrel, followed by the wadding, ball, and ramrod. The siren continued wailing. He eyed the sky again. He saw nothing. There was commotion on the lower decks as the crew dashed to the armories and took up their battle stations. The Pneumatic Zeppelin was not carrying marines, but the Ballblasters and Alchemist troopers—the ones still standing—would be of great assistance in the defense.

  Buckle heard the sound of the pneumatic cannon, its familiar thack thack thack hammering below. Standard cannons were useless against the highly maneuverable steampipers, but the hammergun, with its high rate of fire and fast barrel traverse, could find its mark.

  Pistol ready, Buckle also drew his sword. He edged forward, as far as he dared, to the edge of the mangled catwalk, peering into the fog bank two hundred feet below.

  Four streaks of white light rose in the vapors like upside-down falling stars, plummeting up. Four steampipers.

  Buckle turned to shout a warning into the chattertube station, but it was gone, blasted away. His call of warning was not required anyway—he could hear the voices of crew members ringing out on the adjacent stations, announcing steampipers sighted at the bow, stern, and both flanks between.

  Musket fire blazed across the lower decks as the crew opened up on the attackers. Buckle looked down at the fog bank again. The four steampipers were almost at his altitude, coming on at great speed, zigzagging as they charged, and they were heading straight for him. They had seen the smoldering outline of the compartment-nine breach, a giant red-rimmed doorway into the interior of the airship. Beneath the steampipers, the fog bank glowed with dozens more streaking fire trails.

  There was a flash, blue white, in the midst of the four ascending steampipers. One was thrown into a breakneck spin for two seconds before his steampack boiler exploded in a brilliant yellow flash, blowing the flying machine and its pilot to a thousand flaming smithereens that showered down and vanished in the fog bank beneath.

  The hammergun had scored a lucky hit.

  The three other steampipers throttled up, comet tails brightening, coming on like gangbusters, mere seconds away from the hole where Buckle stood.

  Buckle tightened his fingers around the worn, leather-wrapped grip of his sword.

  The leading Founders steampiper skidded into the mouth of the envelope gap, feet forward, almost on his back, swinging his steampack around to halt his trajectory. His steampack funnels spewed streams of white flame that forced Buckle to duck or be roasted. The other two steampipers sailed in behind the leader, one angling up and out of sight above the Eagle deck, the other veering inside the envelope and hurtling off in the direction of the bow.

  Rolling to his left—Buckle could not roll right, lest he plummet off the sheared end of the catwalk—he jumped to his feet with pistol aimed. The steampiper leader and his spewing contraption hovered over the smoldering compartment vault. The moonlight gleamed on his brass helmet—its rectangular eye slits dark with smoked glass—and on his silver cuirass, emblazoned with the Founders phoenix.

  The steampiper snatched a sawed-off musket from his right hip and swung it to bear on Buckle.

  Buckle fired his pistol at point-blank range, ignoring the zeppelineers’ oath never to discharge a weapon inside a hydrogen airship. Through the burp of powder smoke, he saw a flash at the cheek of the steampiper’s helmet as it deflected the ball.

  With the steampiper leader’s musket muzzle now leveled at him, Buckle tensed to lunge, but there was little he could do to make the fellow miss.

  Blam! The steampiper leader jerked sideways, the tunic cloth on his right shoulder erupting with a burst of stuffing and pinkish blood; his musket went off, the flash nearly blinding Buckle, but the shot missed, the ball ringing off the safety rail mere inches from Buckle’s waist.

  Buckle snapped his head to the left. Sergeant Scully, musket barrel smoking, raced toward him along the catwalk, with four crewmen close at his heels. Scully yanked a pistol from his belt and aimed. “Take that, you fogsucking scum!” he bawled, and fired again. Blam!

  Ballblasters were no slouches when it came to killing their enemies. Having spun the well-armored steampiper leader with his first shot, Scully sent the second pistol ball into the unprotected armpit hole of the cuirass, drilling the man through the chest. The dead steampiper leader’s engines cut out as he went limp and dropped, vanishing into the steaming maw of compartment number nine.

  “What’s this, Captain?” Scully shouted, his face pink with exertion, as he arrived at Buckle’s side. “You gonna take ’em all on by yourself, sir? How about leaving a few for the old salts?”

  “I greatly appreciate your shooting ability, Sergeant,” Buckle said.

  Midshipman Vincent Callas, the apprentice helmsman, came charging down the catwalk with four winded crew members at his heels. Callas looked overly frightened—Buckle did not like that.

  “We have at least two steampipers under the roof,” Buckle snapped as Callas handed him a loaded pistol. “Take up a defensive position here.”

  “It’s a brawl down below, sir,” Scully said, deftly reloading his musket as he spoke. They’re crawling in everywhere, sir!”

  “Aye, Sergeant. Hold this position no matter what, Mister Callas,” Buckle said, hurrying forward to the companionway. “I am going up to Eagle deck.”

  “Have at ’em, Captain!” Scully shouted. “The fogsuckers won’t find a warm welcome here!”

  “Mind what you are shooting at!” Buckle yelled back as he charged up the circular stairwell. When he leapt up onto the Eagle deck, he found himself alone, creeping along under the fluttering envelope roof. He saw a steampack and harness cast on the catwalk grating.

  Buckle ran toward the bow, covering fifty yards. The enemy had to be close.

  A slender steampiper stepped into view in the blast-shield hatchway of compartment four, not more than thirty feet away. The steampiper strode straight at him, helmet and cuirass gleaming, a pistol in each hand.

  Buckle raised his pistol. He saw the steampiper, same as he, turn sideways to him, the duelist’s method of presenting as small a target as possible for the opponent to hit. They fired their pistols in the same instant.

  Buckle missed and so did the steampiper. The inaccuracy of blackbang pistols beyond twenty paces was proven once again.

  But the steampiper had another pistol, and Buckle did not.

  When the steampiper pulle
d the trigger on the second pistol, Buckle threw himself to the catwalk grating. The phosphor-laden ball whizzed over his head in a yellow streak, and he heard it ricochet off metal.

  Buckle jumped to his feet, tossed his empty pistol aside, and drew his saber. The steampiper, short sword drawn, was already rushing him. Buckle charged: the longer arc of his sword swing would win him the initiative if he was aggressive. It worked. As soon as swords were crossed, the metal blades fracturing sparks as they clashed over and over, the steampiper had to back up or be overwhelmed.

  But the steampiper, though considerably smaller than Buckle, clearly female, and wielding a shorter sword, was left-handed and dangerously good. Along with the advantage of helmet and armor, the female steampiper’s counterstrokes were so quick that Buckle barely had time to whip his sword around and parry the stabs away. Yet Buckle slowly won the advantage, forcing the steampiper back on her heels.

  Realizing her predicament, the steampiper lunged with a frantic thrust, and when Buckle hopped back, she used the tiny breathing space to vault over the catwalk rail, leaping across a ten-foot gap to grab ahold of a support rope and slide down to the Castle deck thirty-five feet below.

  “Are you kidding me?!” Buckle howled. Even he wasn’t desperate enough to make a jump like that. He raced to a companionway.

  Buckle leapt down the last four stairs. His boots landed hard on the Castle deck grating. The female steampiper was on him in an instant, her sword blade waving back and forth, glimmering gold in the yellowish illumination of the firefly lanterns on the railing hooks. Buckle backed up, getting his bearings. From the way she balanced the weight of her blade in her arm and wrist, he knew that he was up against an elite swordswoman. He could hear the battle raging below: muskets blazing, swords clanging, shouts of men and women locked in mortal combat.

  The fight for the life of the Pneumatic Zeppelin was in full swing.