Romulus Buckle & the Engines of War

by Richard Ellis Preston Jr.

  Cortez placed her helmet on the table. “I offer my profuse apologies regarding my late arrival to the party. The captain of my airship has been suitably reprimanded, I assure you. So have we yet formulated any battle plans regarding the destruction of the Founders?”

  “We do not seek their destruction, Madame Cortez,” Andromeda said. “We are organizing a mutual defense in the face of an expected invasion.”

  “Ah, yes,” Cortez said thoughtfully. “The invasion.”

  “We must move quickly,” Balthazar said as he folded his hands behind his back. “As soon as is physically possible. The Founders are on the move. Freight trains are crowding at their railheads, stocking supply depots. Their airfields are also experiencing heavy activity—provisioning, bunkering, arming—and the steampiper corps has activated its reserves.”

  Cortez smacked her lips and narrowed her eyes at Balthazar. “If I may ask, Admiral—how did you obtain such detailed intelligence?”

  “These things are well-known.”

  “No, they are not well-known,” said Cortez.

  “We have sources,” Balthazar replied cautiously.

  “So do we,” Cortez said. “Excellent spies. In the port. But never has one ever been able to infiltrate the city proper.”

  “Who says that our informant is inside the city?”

  Buckle’s spine tingled. Balthazar was talking about Aphrodite.

  “Oh, please, my dear Balthazar,” Cortez huffed. “Please do not play me for a fool. Of course you have an operative inside the city. How else could the Crankshaft and Alchemist rescue mission have ambled in and out under the very noses of the Founders themselves?”

  “For a clan with few well-placed spies, you know quite a few things,” Balthazar said.

  Buckle watched as a tense silence filled the hall, emanating from the stare between Balthazar and Cortez. The south-facing windowpanes rattled, thumped by a gust of wind rolling down from the mountains.

  Cortez smiled, but there was nothing but suspicion in it. “How trustworthy is this spy of yours, this traitor to his own people, Admiral? There are numerous conspiracies of fanatics inside the city—anarchists and rebels—zealots who care nothing about our alliance, and who are determined to bring an apocalypse down upon the city.”

  “Such is a risk I am willing to take,” Balthazar said evenly.

  “Fine,” Cortez replied. “Considering the circumstances, it appears the rest of us have no choice but to trust your spy as well.”

  Buckle got a sense of Cortez—she was a narcissist and a charmer, but also a realistic midwife to the aspirations of her clan. Conquest and plunder were what interested the Tinskins the most.

  “We respectfully request that you join us,” Balthazar said. “I am certain you realize that none of us, not even the Tinskin fleet, can withstand the Founders alone.”

  “Perhaps,” Cortez replied slowly, splaying her fingers, stretching them, glancing at each ambassador in turn with obvious deliberateness. “But is this motley crew all you have? Please forgive me, but the Brineboilers possess no weapons, the Alchemists possess no warships, and the Gallowglasses are about as dependable as a cracksman in a jewelry shop.”

  “Damn you, Tinskin!” Mardigan yelled, slamming his fist on the table. “A Gallowglass lives or dies by his word! Not like you, you slippery, nasty, carbuncled Aztec blood drinkers!”

  “Oh, my,” Cortez said evenly, an amused smile rising on her lips. “Perhaps we should leave you to die on your own, then, should we?”

  “Charlatans!” Aleppo snapped.

  Buckle almost laughed out loud. Hate her if you wish, but Cortez was antagonizing the ambassadors with aplomb. He wished he had a glass of rum to accompany the show.

  “Please!” Smelt blurted. “Enough. We must avoid fighting amongst ourselves.”

  Cortez’s dark eyes slipped back to Balthazar. “You have the right idea, Admiral—but in my calculation, even with the addition of our mighty fleet to the combined arms of your five, I would predict that still we would not be able to field enough men and machines to resist the Founders. The dreadnaughts would still prove too much for us.”

  “I assure you that we shall soon count Spartak as one of us,” Balthazar said. “And I have high hopes to bring in the Steamweavers.”

  Cortez raised an eyebrow. “Spartak? Really, yes? If you could bring in the Russians, then your Grand Alliance would live up to its name, and our strength would be sufficient to win the war.” She straightened her back, the metal plates on her coat glittering. “I can help you with the reluctant Steamweavers—we have a relationship with them. But with Spartak, those wretched, penny-grubbing Cossacks, I am afraid we are not on speaking terms.”

  “Your help?” Aleppo blurted. “So may we assume you are in, then?

  Cortez looked at Aleppo as she might regard a cockroach. “In? Of course I am in. The Tinskins are in, you fool. Just by steaming here to your little ‘secret’ parley, we have cast the die. Do you really think that the Founders spies have not been watching, do not know exactly what we are up to? Your secret alliance—even if the Founders had not been planning an invasion before, we may well have triggered one. In the eyes of the Founders, just being here has made all of us their mortal enemy. Oh, yes, we are in. We are all utterly, perilously, irrevocably in.”

  In the heavy silence that followed the Tinskin ambassador’s words, Buckle realized he was tense, sitting at the edge of his chair. Cortez was right. They were all in the stewpot now.

  But he would rather risk a kraken as his ally than a Tinskin.

  Where the hell is a bottle of rum?

  WHISPERS IN THE CORRIDOR

  “THE TINSKINS?” SABRINA SPLUTTERED. “RYDER is hitching a ride with the Tinskins?”

  “Quiet, Sabrina,” Buckle whispered, glancing through the doorway and into the infirmary where Balthazar sat between Max’s bed and Tyro’s iron lung. Buckle did not want Balthazar to hear their heated discussion. The decisions had been made and war seemed inevitable—there was no point in him knowing that his children might disapprove. “It is a diplomatic mission.”

  “It’s a bloody farce,” Ivan grumbled. “Ryder is as good as dead, I tell you.”

  “I do not think so,” Buckle replied, taking a firm hold of his adopted brother and sister by the shoulders. Balthazar had called—demanded, really—that they come in from the airfield and attend that evening’s Seasonal ball. And it was something of a feat to keep Buckle, Sabrina, and Ivan away from the Pneumatic Zeppelin.

  “You trust the Tinskins now, brother?” Ivan asked. The light from the corridor lamp gleamed on the copper plate covering half of his face—he was something of a contraption now, if only a temporary one. The injuries he had sustained to the left side of his body from the steampiper bomb three weeks prior had been brutal. His left arm had been shattered by shrapnel; amputation had loomed as a real possibility until Fogg and Doctor Lee found a way to get the circulation flowing properly through the flesh again. He been back on his feet for a week now. The left side of his face was covered by a brass-and-copper faceplate crawling with cogs and gears, dominated by a brass-ribbed medical half goggle over the left eye. Brass rods ran down Ivan’s neck into a large shoulder piece, which supported a mechanical assist encasing the length of the injured arm, a clockwork exoskeleton creaking with turning springs and hinges that ended in a knight’s gauntlet of metal fingers.

  Ivan would have to wear the mechanical arm until the muscles and skin beneath had been given enough time to recover. He hated it. Being an inventor himself, he constantly criticized and cursed the clan inventors’ effort of design. The screws on the shoulder were too loose, the neck support too restrictive, the goggle reservoir too wet, and the fingers too tight, ready to crush anything fragile he held in his hand. The “bloody nutcracker,” he called it.

  “Ryder’s presence among the Tinskins will show the Steamweavers that the Grand Alliance is real,” Buckle said. For some strange reason, he trusted that Cortez woul
d take care of Ryder. She had guaranteed his safety, of course—mere words—but Buckle believed she would safeguard him, if only to secure Crankshaft loyalty.

  “Who is in charge of this Grand Alliance?” Sabrina asked, looking unconvinced and worried, ever the skeptic.

  “Balthazar,” Buckle replied. “It took two hours of arguing—mostly between Cortez and Mardigan—but Balthazar will become supreme commander of the combined fleet, with the exception of the Tinskins, who would only accept a condition of joint command. Once the city falls and Fawkes is dead, we shall embrace the citizens as brothers and sisters. No plundering.”

  “Once the city falls,” Sabrina whispered. “As if that will be easy.”

  Once the city falls. Buckle felt a shiver run up his spine. Here, in the quiet whisperings in the darkness, the reality of the situation suddenly grabbed him with sharp, ice-cold fingers. War.

  “When does it begin?” Ivan asked.

  “The fleets are to rendezvous over New Berlin two weeks from today,” Buckle said. “But before that we must engage Spartak and the Steamweavers with all haste, to garner their loyalty before the Founders can coerce them into their own ranks.”

  “Who is sending an envoy to Spartak?” Sabrina asked.

  “The Imperials,” Buckle replied.

  “The Imperials?” Ivan huffed. “They have been in a skirmish war with Spartak forever. The Russians are not going to warm to them fast enough.”

  Buckle nodded. “They know that. So Balthazar is sending them one of our airships, to carry the Imperial ambassador to Muscovy. Once again, presenting a united front for the Grand Alliance.”

  Sabrina and Ivan stood silent, considering the new information, mired in helpless disapproval.

  Buckle heard the flame crackle in the overhead lantern. War made for uncomfortable bedfellows. “What is done is done,” he said softly.

  “And Balthazar is going ahead with the Seasonal ball?” Ivan muttered. “Is that appropriate?”

  “I agree with his decision,” Buckle replied. “It looks like we are in the last few days of peace, Ivan. We should raise a glass of beer and celebrate this moment, for I fear much blood and pain awaits us on the morrow.”

  THE MARTIAN IN THE IRON LUNG

  IVAN AND SABRINA DEPARTED, AND Buckle strode into the citadel infirmary, where Balthazar huddled close to his wounded daughter.

  The quiet hospital was Doctor Edison Lee’s little healing kingdom, a long chamber, bright with double-paned windows, and every surface scrubbed with disinfectant. It was a place of white walls, a white ceiling, and white-painted floor timbers, of black iron bedframes, of light-gray blankets, gray pillowcases, and gray infirmary gowns. The soft daylight easing in through the windows—all the heavy white curtains were drawn back—glowed sweetly as it illuminated rainbows of color inside the medicine bottles lining the shelves. Even the whale oil in the glass reservoirs of the night lanterns glimmered, in a lugubrious way.

  But the quiet was relative; two fireplaces at each end of the chamber crackled with wood burned to translucent red honey-combs sunk in drifts of gray-white ash. And there was the steady, mechanical beat of Tyro’s iron lung, a long cylindrical copper apparatus enclosing his bed. The pipes screwed in to its base ran up to the ceiling and through holes in the wall to the adjacent room, where a small boiler and pneumatic bellows were maintained.

  The man inside the iron lung—or, more accurately, the Martian inside it—was Tyro, Max’s brother, lying in a coma since he’d been severely wounded during the Imperial raid. His head was the only part of him visible outside the apparatus, propped on a pillow, with a thick rubber seal around his neck; inside the iron lung, the rise and fall of air pressure induced normal breathing movements in his lungs.

  Tyro had been a quiet young man, a capable engineer, though not as exceptional as his sister Max, whom he staunchly defended at every turn. He bore a great resemblance to his sister, though he was considerably more robust. His fine Martian nose bore the slight irregularity of having been broken at some point, though not flattened, and his hair was striped, black and white, the streaks matching the skin beneath. In this respect, his genetics differed from Max, whose mane was entirely black.

  When the Pneumatic Zeppelin was home and Max was off duty, she could be found in the hospital, sitting beside Tyro. Nurses had confided to Buckle that Max would often read to her brother well into the night, and occasionally—if the rest of the infirmary was empty—she would sleep in the empty bunk beside his. There had always been an intense connection between Max and Tyro, Buckle knew, for the Martians possessed some sort of collective mind as well as an individual one, and he often felt sorry for Max, left alone without her brother, the only other Martian in the clan.

  Buckle felt sorry for both of them. Now, as they lay close together, the hissing pulsations of Tyro’s machine sounded reassuring, or at least soothing. This was a good thing, for Buckle, a man who would never allow fear a stage inside his system, knew that a despair did lie deep inside him, out of sight in the darkness, but present nonetheless, that Max might die.

  Balthazar sat beside Max’s bed, leaning his bulk close to her, his big hands cradling her long white fingers; he was listening to her steady intake of air as well.

  Buckle stopped beside Balthazar, placing his hand on his father’s shoulder.

  “She looks so very troubled, my little girl,” Balthazar said softly.

  Buckle looked at Max. She slept, unconscious within a lotus fog of morphine. Under the pale-gray blanket she appeared small, like a child. She was breathing easily, to a constant beat, and that encouraged Buckle.

  It was hard to forget Max, pressed against him in the cave, her cold, naked torso against his, the quaking shivers of her stomach making the fight for her life all too real, a broken baby bird clutched against his breast. He had not wanted to lose her. In the very depths of his soul he had not wanted to lose her. And the kiss. Buckle’s brain still could not even begin to compute the ramifications. But his heart was certain—and silently asking for more.

  When hell freezes over.

  “I think she appears rather relaxed, Father,” Buckle said, peering at Max’s face in search of troubles and not finding any. A memory of Max being snatched by the sabertooth struck Buckle, and he suppressed a shiver.

  “Hmmmm,” Balthazar replied. After a long pause he spoke again. “I have decided to dispatch you and the Pneumatic Zeppelin to Spartak for the negotiations.”

  Buckle blinked. “Yes, Father.”

  “With my sons and daughter aboard—you, Sabrina, and Ivan—along with the Imperial contingent, that should give the Russians ample evidence of my resolve,” Balthazar said.

  “I am honored that you would ask this of my ship and my crew.”

  “I am also sending Ambassador Washington along with you.”

  “All right, sir,” Buckle replied, with a deflated nod. Rutherford Washington was a bit of a stick-in-the-mud, and Buckle would have preferred that his father trust him enough to stand for the clan at the negotiating table, but he also knew that was too much to ask.

  “Take it easy on him,” Balthazar said, reading Buckle’s mind. “Yes, Rutherford is difficult, but I trust him.”

  “Yes,” Buckle replied.

  “How is our patient doing?” Doctor Edison Lee asked, appearing from a doorway, rubbing his hands with a white towel in front of his crisp light-blue smock. Lee was the clan’s chief physician and a man of considerable intellectual and professional prowess—verging on arrogance, Buckle felt—but while clinical, he was always kind.

  “I cannot convince myself of her condition either way,” Balthazar said plaintively. “I do not seem able to separate what I sense of her health and what I wish it to be.”

  Lee stopped at the foot of the bed and studied Max with an expert air. He was of medium height and slight build, his straight black hair and narrow, serious eyes strongly suggesting the Asian blood of his father. “Well, Doctor Fogg did have to assist me with a
n emergency transfusion from her brother as soon as he brought her in. It was good of Doctor Fogg to stay—I am not the expert on Martian physiology he is—but her vitals are holding and there is no sign of infection, which is a very good thing.”

  “She is doing well, then?” Balthazar asked.

  Lee nodded. “She is holding her own, though it is a battle to keep her hydrated. Her recovery will be slow, perhaps three weeks to a month before she can return to duty, barring any complications. But one never knows what to expect with the superb Martian recuperative arc.”

  Balthazar kissed Max gently on the cheek and stood up. For a moment he looked unsteady, then he recovered. “All very good news, Doctor.” Balthazar smiled his strong, reassuring grin. “Now, my son, when shall the Pneumatic Zeppelin be ready to depart?”

  “We should be airborne before dawn, Father,” Buckle said. “Once the Arabella is taken care of.”

  “Splendid. Proceed at your best speed; you must reach Spartak as quickly as possible. The Imperials may depart tonight, but they shall wait for you to catch up with them at New Berlin.”

  “Understood, Father.”

  “Gentlemen,” Balthazar said, slapping Buckle on the shoulder as he stepped into the aisle. “And take care of my daughter, Doctor Lee,” he added as he strode out of the room.

  “Where is my other crewman, Doctor? Name of Valentine?” Buckle asked.

  “He is being prepared for surgery. He is going to lose the leg,” Lee replied with clinical propriety.

  Buckle looked at Max, but he was thinking of Valentine. Old salts like Valentine—zeppelineering being his life—usually did not fare well when injuries forced them out of the air corps. They often became sad, pension-financed drunks in the local taverns, eventually discovered frozen in a back alley one morning, clutching an empty bottle.

  “Captain Buckle, if I may have a moment,” Lee said.