Romulus Buckle and the Luminiferous Aether (The Chronicles of the Pneumatic Zeppelin #3)

by Richard Ellis Preston Jr.

  The second razorfish vanished. Buckle spun around, aiming his harpoon into the empty sea in front of him. The razorfish were only the opening salvo, he knew, a way to disorganize the defense, and now the brutes would come and finish them off.

  The brutes came.

  Looming out of the darkness, the nightmares came.

  They came with light, brilliant light, shining in three tight, bouncing pairs.

  Buckle blinked hard at the blinding, turquoise-edged illumination. What he could see made his guts tighten. A half-dozen razorfish slithered at the fore. Behind them heaved octopus-like beasties, pink flesh engines with lavender eyes glaring over rafts of black suckered tentacles pulling their huge bodies across the bottom.

  The paired columns of light beamed down from the crowns of the octopi, pouring forth from the large eyes of the gagools. The gagools were awful creatures, manlike in form but scaled along the length of the body and equipped with skull crests that gave their heads a rabid, hippocampus-like appearance. Long gill rows, a darker blue-green color than the rest of their bodies, lined their necks. They jabbered in high-pitched shrieks, fangs bared, waving their arms above their rubbery octopus perches.

  Buckle lifted his harpoon and took aim at the dark sliver of skin between the eyes of the lead gagool, but the creature saw him and ducked behind his octopus mount.

  The octopi launched the first assault. Charging the circle on three sides, the cephalopods lashed with their orange-purple tentacles, the razorfish darting in beneath them in blurs of silver barbs. Buckle, Felix and Sabrina thrust their harpoons forward, forcing the razorfish aside and slashing the octopi’s squirming arms that jerked back in trails of purple blood.

  At the edges of his peripheral vision Buckle saw the other two Guardian octopi and their gagools swing around on each flank, aiming to overwhelm the small knot of divers by encirclement. There was nothing he could do for that. His hands were full with the lashing, lithe tentacles of the octopus in his face, a gagool peering over its neck, the light from its eyes blinding him. Buckle ducked and staggered backwards to prevent being enveloped by the tentacle mass. Felix and Sabrina retreated alongside him, but to fall back much further would collapse the circle.

  Buckle aimed his crossbow into the center of the octopi looming over him, into the underside between the tentacles, and fired. The crossbow bucked as the harpoon bolt zipped through the water and buried its point in the beastie. The tentacles jerked back. The octopus released a burst of bubbles and a shriek so piercing it battered Buckle’s ears inside his helmet.

  The razorfish switched from harassment to full on attack. Buckle jabbed his harpoon left and right, fighting off blur after whipping blur of silver. Yellow-green blood streaked the water as his blade bit into one writhing body after another. The survivors, snapping at their dying fellows as they sank as if in disdain of their clumsiness, seemed undeterred by casualties.

  A tentacle wrapped around Buckle’s harpoon and tore it free of his grasp. He grabbed at the knife on his belt, unsure of exactly where it was, and found it. He drew it in front of him, the metal blade flashing in the wobbling underwater sunlight, but it seemed pitifully small.

  A shadow arched overhead; a gagool, launching from its high beastie perch, kicked aside a harpoon point and landed in the center of the company’s defensive ring. Kishi and Marsh turned but the monster knocked them aside as it charged, its white-hot eyes locking onto Buckle’s as it barreled straight at him.

  Sabrina stabbed at the gagool but the creature hurled her aside. Slashing his knife back and forth, Buckle could do little but hold his ground. The gagool sprang, grabbing Buckle’s knife hand at the wrist with one massive webbed claw and taking hold of his chest plate with the other. It flung its mouth open, impossibly wide, the green tongue writhing in a cavern lined with rows of sharp triangular teeth rippling down the musculature of its throat. Buckle threw his free hand against the gagool’s chest but the gagool was stronger than he was. His muscles shaking so hard the bones threatened to shatter, he barely heard his own gasps in his helmet. He was done for.

  Buckle jammed his hand into the gagool’s gills, attempting to rip one out, but it was no good. No good. The gagool yanked his head into its mouth, the fangs and horned tongue scraping his faceplate in cringe-inducing squeaks as it stuffed his helmet in.

  The gagool was swallowing Buckle. It was swallowing his head whole, helmet and all. He could see down its throat, down the sucking funnel of teeth and blood-red muscle.

  Buckle thrashed but the jaws had him locked in. The gagool stated swaying, jerking back and forth. Now the damned thing was trying to rip his head off.

  All of a sudden, in a flash of white light and blue darkness, Buckle was free. He was hurled aside, his bruised body floating down to the flagstones. The gagool had flung him away.

  The gagool clawed at its right leg. Buckle saw Penny Dreadful, the little robot not higher than the gagool’s waist, glowing red at the seams, bubbles streaming out of the back of its metal skull as it emitted a low, profoundly deep sort of wail. Two long-bladed daggers slashed in front of Penny; it wasn’t holding them—the blades had snapped out from its forearms, the metal hands now folded back, and it drove them with great speed, again and again, deep into the thigh and hip of the gagool. Dark blood gushed out of the beastie as it frantically snatched at Penny’s blades. But the automaton was too quick, cutting the monster to ribbons.

  Finding his balance, Buckle swung to his feet and rushed the gagool but his dagger blade bounced off its neck. The gagool no longer noticed him. Penny Dreadful plunged both of its blades into the gagool’s right knee joint and yanked them out on each side, severing the creature’s lower leg.

  Staggering, the enraged gagool snatched Penny and pressed both claws around its head in an attempt to crush its skull, even trying to sink its teeth into the unyielding metal. Penny continued the murderous assault, driving her knives over and over into the gagool’s midriff. The water inked thick with black blood. Buckle continued his attack and his stabs found thinner armor across the small of the gagool’s back, the knife snapping through the exoskeleton, followed by the easy plunge into the flesh.

  The gagool crumpled forward, obscured a drifting shroud of its own blood. It took all of Buckle’s strength to pry the beastie’s hands off Penny. Once the automaton was free, the gagool drew its arms and legs into a fetal position, the light fading rapidly from its eyes, and sank.

  The silver tornado of razorfish eased back, apparently stunned by the death of the gagool. Buckle staggered through the blood-filled water. Everyone still roughly held the circle but the octopi had snatched away their harpoons and spears and they were now slashing with daggers. The two surviving gagools remained on the backs of their mounts, hurling javelins tipped with nasty-looking barbs. The riderless octopus attacked with a particular fury and its big cold eyes looked like they were locked on Buckle.

  The company was being overwhelmed, rotating, slowly squeezing into a tighter and tighter fighting formation; they were almost back-to-back, the signature of the last stand. There was no way to break out, no hope of reinforcement, and they had to either defeat the beasties or die on the bottom.

  Penny was still emitting its ear-throbbing, siren-like wail as Buckle knelt to collect a fallen harpoon from a bed of seaweed. As he rose he saw one of the Dart’s crew—it was Marsh—staggering backwards, both hands wrapped around a gagool’s javelin buried deep in his stomach, bubbles and blood flooding out around the shaft. The man’s face was ghastly, his mouth flung impossibly wide in a silent scream inside the glass. Buckle reached for Marsh but he dropped, his weight belt dragging him down onto the rocks.

  The razorfish attacked the gap in the line, tornadoing in as they tried to wedge the opening wider. Buckle jumped in front of Tonda and Gustey, attacking the razorfish with his harpoon. Penny Dreadful was alongside him, its long, sharp knives at the ready, and he continued to be surprised at how easily the machine moved through the water and how powerful
its movements were.

  The two surviving gagools increased the illumination from their eyes to a blinding level, uttering long, demented shrieks. Lost in a tunnel of white light, Buckle saw the shadows of tentacles coming in from all sides, felt the surge of the barbed javelins brushing past as they cut through the water. The razorfish swirled, forming a violent, half-seen wreath of bladed, flashing silver bodies constricting around the company, threatening to cut to ribbons anything unfortunate enough to be caught in the wall of their churn.

  Buckle gripped the handle of his harpoon as hard as he could and it was immediately torn out of his grasp. Drawing his dagger again, he shared a desperate glance with Sabrina on his immediate left.

  She shot him a brave, encouraging smile.

  Buckle smiled back.

  XII

  THE ROAD OF TOMBS

  The Guardians closed in. The cyclone of razorfish—there seemed to be even more of them now, judging by the height of the wall—wound tighter and tighter, with the lashing tentacles of the cephalopods looming behind, and atop them the horrible blazing eyes of the gagools, the beasties terrible in aspect from atop their perches, their long black claws fully extended. It seemed to Buckle that Penny Dreadful was the only member of the group who could inflict any real damage on the gagools and he doubted it could take them all on.

  A great horn sounded, a soulful, whale-song blare, low and dense and ancient, throbbing inside Buckle’s helmet though he hardly noticed it, so immense was the desperate gallows-gasp of his own breathing in his ears.

  Penny Dreadful’s baleful siren stopped.

  The razorfish vanished abruptly, the currents of their whirlpool whipping around Buckle and his company in empty whorls of disturbed sand. The octopi retreated, tentacles retracting, the two gagools snapping their heads back and forth in some kind of indignant rage, releasing high-pitched cries as the lights in their eyes quickly faded to a glowing, red-black that looked like fire embers.

  Above the heads of the gagools appeared a beautiful, dolphin-like machine with an open deck, its hull colored white and gold with copper and brass elements polished to a brilliant sheen. It was an Atlantean patrol boat, the keel burning with the same bright light pulsing from the domes.

  One Atlantean diver stood at the boat controls while another, gripping a long white pike, glared through the clear glass bubble of her seahorse-shaped helmet. Both divers were encased in white diving suits laced with the same brilliant light as the hull. They shut off their booming horn, leaving Buckle’s ears to ring in the odd silence of his pinging oxygen tank. Through the scratched glass of his helmet window the Atlanteans looked blurred, bathed in the mysterious light.

  Penny Dreadful strode forward, cresting a small rise of rocks glowing with green algae. It snapped its arm-blades back into its forearms, allowing its hands to click back into their normal positions. She raised one reset hand and waved, waved like a little girl coming home.

  The Atlanteans stared at her in cold silence.

  Buckle waited, shaking off his adrenalin, waiting for his heart to stop pounding in his chest so he could swallow and ease the parchment of his throat.

  Felix stepped forward in his bulky diving suit; he shoved Penny Dreadful aside and made a dramatic, awkward bow to the Atlanteans. He pointed back in the direction of the Dart and made some kind of signal with his hands.

  The female Atlantean nodded. She disconnected an umbilical line from her suit and hopped off the boat, descending to the bottom in a vault of glowing light. Once on the sea floor she motioned for them all to follow her to Atlantis.

  Felix hurried back, joining the surviving members of his crew as they secured the bodies of their two dead crewmates. The Atlantean aboard the boat made no effort to assist, wheeling around and speeding away, the sea machine’s engines running bizarrely silent and clean. Sabrina helped Rachel and Tonda with Gustey’s stretcher. Within moments they set off after the Atlantean woman, who was already fifty yards ahead of them, not looking back, cutting through the water far more easily than the weight belt-encumbered Dart divers could ever hope to manage. They trudged after her at their best speed.

  Buckle pushed his aching muscles on without letting up. Penny Dreadful fell in alongside him and the automaton looked to Buckle to be both excited and worried, though he didn’t know how he might read such emotions from a machine’s inflexible metal face and body.

  The walk to Atlantis took some time—the domes, their glass exteriors illumed by the strange yellow-white light, loomed taller and taller out of the murk—but still looked to be at least three quarters of a mile away. Buckle had lost track of how long he’d been in the diving suit. The gagool’s attack had ripped away the pressure gauge apparatus on his right wrist so he had no way of knowing how much air he might have left in his tanks. But since there was nothing for it he decided he needn’t worry about it.

  The seaweed fields fell away as the Atlantean diver entered the sunken Roman city. The road turned into a thoroughfare, striking a straight course through the magnificent ruins fringed by fluted columns and surging schools of fish. Statues of Neptune, tridents held high, the white marble overgrown by fantastic patterns of glowing green sea algae, watched.

  Buckle was familiar with the Iliad and the Odyssey—two books which had survived The Storming—and much of the Snow World’s knowledge of ancient human civilizations was drawn from those pages. The sacred Victoriana was the blueprint of the new society reconstructed from the ashes of the apocalypse and the fragmented ancient histories were given an elevated importance in the education of the young, at least in the Crankshaft schools. Buckle had been taught about the Greeks and Romans but much of it was extrapolation. The difference between a Doric, Ionic and Corinthian column had somehow survived while so much else had been lost.

  Buckle realized that the glorious city was a façade, an elaborate sham, a beautiful replica—up close it was easy to see most of the structures were shells, hollow and well braced. The false Roman city was beautiful and alive with sea life, silver and orange fish flitting through the loggias and porticoes like flocks of lovely birds. But it was nothing more than an elaborately constructed piece of scenery, built for the leisure and contemplation of the Atlanteans looking out their windows into the ocean. Buckle both liked and disliked the idea; the memory of the great civilizations had been reduced to an artificial background for the Atlanteans to appreciate as they sipped some form of seaweed tea.

  It all seems so still and quiet down here, Buckle thought, once one got past the gagools.

  But the war-footing of men intruded: the Founders submarines constantly rumbled just under the shimmering surface overhead, their dark outlines veering, haunting and not dissimilar to zeppelins in the sky.

  The nature of the ocean bottom changed once again after the company cleared the false city. The road plunged through golden-brown and yellow-green sea fields waving back and forth as far as the eye could see, the rows dotted with groups of diver-farmers and their helpful sea creatures. Thick layers of bioluminescent algae filled the cracks between the road flagstones, giving the path a honeycombed glow.

  Buckle was struck by the appearance of tomb markers and mausoleums lining the sides of the highway, ornate statues and scrolls of marble, granite, pink-orange coral or lapis lazuli, running to the very gates of Atlantis itself. The gravestones were chiseled with the words of a language Buckle recognized as Latin, surely listing the names and accomplishments of the Atlantean dead. How odd to line one’s grand avenue with sarcophagi, he thought. It felt a bit macabre to a man whose clan burned their dead on funeral pyres, but there were many ways to ensure the dead might not be forgotten—at least, not forgotten too quickly.

  Once the company reached the nearest dome they marched under it, into its vast shadow away from the sunlight. Buckle felt the presence of the massive, barnacle-coated underside of the dome as it passed twenty feet above him. The Atlantean diver, now seventy-five yards ahead, stopped in the middle of a circle of seven gr
een-coated pillars, jammed the end of her pike into the sand and waited for the group to catch up with her. Once he arrived alongside the woman, Buckle realized they were standing under the surface of a glittering pool, an oval opening into a large interior chamber flooded with light.

  Buckle’s skin tingled. Hovering on the other side of the biggest column, one which had some kind of lift built into it, was a gagool. The creature, floating easily, its webbed feet inches above the sand, watched them with its red-ember eyes, motionless except for the constant pumping of its thick reddish-blue gills at the neck.

  The Atlantean diver unclipped her weight belt and sailed upward, breaching the surface of the pool. Felix, Kishi and Rachel relieved themselves of their belts and nursed Gustey’s stretcher on their ascent. Tonda followed suit. Buckle signaled for Sabrina and Welly to follow them up.

  The last one on the bottom, Buckle glanced up at the surface of the dome pool, now agitated by the many swimmers treading water at its flashing surface. Activity flickered above that, people pulling the divers out of the water. He glanced at Penny Dreadful and pointed up. Penny nodded and shot upwards in a burst of bubbles.

  Now alone, the last man, Buckle felt the hairs standing on the back of his neck as he turned to look at the gagool; it stared at him, its big flickering eyes as reflective as two big cauldrons full of clear water. Buckle saw his reflection, his green face inside the diving helmet, looking back at him from the two mirrors of the gagool’s eyes; it looked like his soul peering back at him from the land of the dead.

  That was damned unpleasant, Buckle thought.

  Buckle dropped his weight belt and his body ascended, feeling light as a feather after being anchored by lead bricks to the bottom for so long, up into the shimmering white light above, plunging upwards into the sparkling white light of the unknown.