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

by Richard Ellis Preston Jr.

“You abandon us!” Galba howled from below. “You lie, Horatus! You abandon us!”

  The crowd’s apprehensive mumbling morphed to a roar, thousands of angry voices, indignant, terrified, rising up in rage. A piece of rock, perhaps a chunk of brick, clanged off the bottom of the catwalk.

  “Hurry!” Horatus said, sprinting through the group to take the lead.

  Buckle ran alongside Sabrina and Welly as more objects—mostly small rocks and bricks—sailed up around them, a few ricocheting off the catwalk, but none had much momentum due to the height.

  Horatus and the Praetorians arrived at the far hatchway and quickly set to applying the combination code to the cylinder.

  “You lie to us!” Galba bellowed. “You abandon us! Where is the First Consul? Where is Marius?”

  The hatch opened with a puff of pressurized air. The two Praetorians yanked Cicero through it before it was even halfway open.

  The thunder of the angry mob followed Buckle as he, Sabrina, Penny, and Welly swung through the hatchway. Horatus jumped into the passageway and the Praetorians hauled the heavy hatch shut behind him, cutting off the roar of the mob with the sharp clang of heavy metal.

  “Your city is lost,” Buckle said to Horatus as he spun the door wheel. “How could you lie to them in such a fashion?”

  “The truth shall do them no good now,” Horatus replied as he slapped the hatch-locking lever into place. “They shall not drown unless the Founders wish it. Their fate is already sealed, as is ours. The First Consul betrayed us all. Nothing matters now but the safety of the Keeper.”

  XLV

  OCTAVIAN’S ESCAPE POD

  Buckle became disoriented in the mad rush through a series of winding Atlantean passageways but it didn’t matter. Horatus and his Praetorians knew exactly where they were going; they led the group through the humid veins of the underwater city, clattering along one tube after another under thousands of aether tubes and metal pipes glittering with a million pearls of condensation.

  It was startling when Horatus finally halted at a hatchway, so accustomed had Buckle become to the relentless movement through the labyrinth.

  “This hatch opens into the corridor leading to the First Consul’s escape pod,” Horatus said as he manipulated the combination cylinder. “The pilot will be in the pod unless she is captured or killed. Turn left and be ready to cross swords. Nothing matters except the Keeper, do you hear me? He must escape with us or die in the attempt.”

  “Aye,” Buckle said, drawing his sword.

  The locks slid aside and Horatus kicked the hatch open, lunging out, gladius at the ready, followed by the two Praetorians with Cicero between. Exiting the hatchway, Buckle found himself in an ornate corridor with a crimson carpet and arched bulkheads plated with brass. To his left he saw a docking platform with a large circular hatch flung wide open flanked on each side by marble statues of Neptune and oblong windows providing wide views of the sea.

  An Atlantean guard in white and gold armor stood at the ready on the platform, harpoon gripped against his chest. “Hurry, Commander!” he shouted.

  An Atlantean officer, his white and gold armor coated with blood, raced into view from the opposite end of the curving passageway. “Commander Horatus! The guards are overwhelmed. They’re coming! Dozens of them!”

  “Atlanteans!” Horatus boomed. “With me! We make our stand here!” The two Praetorians and the two Atlantean soldiers jumped to form a line across the passageway with Horatus in the center.

  Horatus grabbed Buckle by the collar and hauled him around. “I cannot ask you to die here, Captain—but the Keeper must not fall into the hands of the enemy. The power of the aether in the wrong hands would be the end of everything. If he is to be captured you must run him through. You must destroy him.”

  “He knows!” Cicero wailed.

  “Get him into the pod!” Horatus snapped. “Get him into the pod!”

  Sabrina and Welly grabbed Cicero by the scruff of his toga and pushed him across the platform, Penny Dreadful bringing up the rear.

  “You are a hero, commander Horatus,” Cicero shouted back over his shoulder. “Your sacrifice shall not be forgotten!”

  “Do you understand what I ask of you, Captain?” Horatus asked.

  “I understand,” Buckle replied.

  “The survival of Atlantis depends upon him,” Horatus pressed, gripping Buckle’s collar tighter. “Promise me.”

  “I give you my word,” Buckle said.

  Horatus looked relieved, the tightness of the skin around his eyes easing. “Good. Get him to Seneca on Insulae Five. Nowhere else. Insulae Five. The Keeper shall show you the way.”

  A mass of blue-coated men and women appeared around the bend of the hallway, coming on the run, led by their flashing swords and pikes.

  “We shall hold them off as along as we can,” Horatus said, turning to join his soldiers. “Go!”

  “Get in or you’ll not be coming!” A female voice shouted from inside the pod.

  Buckle swung through the hatchway and into a narrow cylindrical cabin lined with luminiferous aether tubes and portholes, offering barely enough room for six small seats. At the front a female pilot with pinned-back brown hair and a white uniform glanced back in apprehension as she threw switches and flipped toggles.

  “Seal the hatch,” the pilot shouted.

  Cicero swung the hatch closed behind Buckle. “Hatch shut,” he shouted back, winding the door wheel. “Seal engaged. Get us out of here, Valeria!” Cicero squeezed his bulbous form between Buckle and Welly and hurried forward to take the seat alongside the pilot.

  The front of the pod had a big window through which Buckle glimpsed the towering, brilliantly lit curve of the Aventine dome glass alongside their pod, and beyond that the endless depths of the sunlit sea where the shadowy Founders submarines still circled like sharks. Through the metal of the hatch he heard muffled shouts, clashing steel and the cries of dying men—Horatus and his doomed Atlanteans being overrun.

  Buckle saw Cicero force his fingers into his mouth as if his very life depended upon it. Cicero spat a glass ampule into the palm of his hand.

  “Don’t lose that, Keeper,” Valeria said. “We’re by no means out of danger yet.”

  Cicero took a deep breath and returned the ampule to its compartment in his golden dolphin ring.

  A powerful vibration shook the pod, followed by a hammer-blow concussion that canted the deck and nearly threw Buckle and everyone else into a pile. The lights sputtered and died, sending the submarine interior into a wavering, ocean-lit darkness. As he regained solid footing Buckle noticed that the Atlantean dome had also gone dark, its high glass walls now only reflecting sunlight from the ocean surface.

  “My engineers have destroyed the city’s luminiferous aether engines, as is their duty,” Cicero announced grimly. Buckle took a seat in silence, as did Sabrina and Welly. Penny Dreadful stood against the bulkhead beside the hatch.

  Valeria activated the cabin’s boil agitators. Buckle heard the pitter-patter of the tiny machine arms spinning inside their glass housings as every instrument in the boat—which covered nearly every inch of hull not a window—rapidly lit up with green bioluminescence.

  “Disengaging from docking bay,” Valeria said, flipping a set of brass switches.

  Buckle heard a loud metallic clank followed by a grinding rattle that shook the pod. Buckle tensed. It did not sound healthy.

  Valeria flipped a set of wooden-handled switches back and forth. “Automatic disengage has failed,” she said. “Keeper—perform emergency manual disengage.”

  “With all good speed,” Cicero answered, leaping up from his seat and squeezing along the tight aisle until he reached a hand wheel located in the upper right quadrant above the hatch. He pointed to an identical wheel in the upper left quadrant. “Clockwise, if you please?”

  Buckle jumped up, grabbing the wheel and rotating it in a clockwise direction as Cicero did the same. Both cranks turned with very little resistance.


  “The pod’s docking pins are fully retracted,” Cicero announced.

  “Curse the luck!” Valeria shouted. “An airlock clamp must be stuck. I’ll wager that shaking we took warped it. Step back from the hatchway! Firing emergency bolts!”

  Buckle stepped back from the hatch along with Cicero, though that distance wasn’t much inside the pod.

  Valeria lifted a panel cover and flipped a red-painted lever. Two loud bangs hammered against the rear bulkhead. The pod bounced but did not swing free of the airlock.

  “No good!” Cicero howled. “No good!”

  Valeria spun around in her seat. “A docking bay clamp has malfunctioned. We cannot disengage. Our only hope is to eject the clamp itself from the docking bay.”

  “And how do we do that?” Buckle asked.

  “It can only be done from inside the airlock,” Valeria said grimly. “Two switches inside the emergency instrument compartment on the left side of the outer docking bay hatch.”

  “Then open the hatch!” Buckle said, drawing his sword in the cramped space. Sabrina hedged alongside him, saber already out of its sheath. Welly also drew his blade. “We shall form a defensive perimeter on the platform. We can hold the enemy at bay for the few seconds necessary to perform the task.”

  “You cannot,” Valeria said.

  Buckle glared at Valeria. “What now?”

  “The one who goes out will be left behind,” Valeria said, drawing her pistol, a polished white, elegant weapon, and laying it on the instrument panel beside her. “The airlock must be sealed before the clamp disengage will activate. Whichever of you goes out there will be left behind.”

  “Damn it!” Buckle snapped.

  “I shall go,” Penny Dreadful said, stepping forward.

  “No, you won’t,” Buckle answered.

  “The automaton isn’t tall enough to reach the switches,” Valeria said.

  “It’s me,” Welly offered, his voice strong but shaking. “Just like who gets the breathers. It must be me.”

  “No, it’s me,” Sabrina announced.

  “It’s on me,” Buckle said. “I appreciate the overabundance of self-sacrifice here but it will be me. No arguments.”

  “No!” Penny Dreadful mewled softly. “No, no, no, no.”

  “But I must go with you,” Welly began. “Someone has to defend your back or you won’t have time to throw the switches!”

  “The young man is right,” Valeria said.

  “Very well,” Buckle said quietly. He knew when it was necessary to send zeppelineers to their deaths, including himself. “You’re with me, Wellington. You take the fogsuckers while I throw the switches. That will only take a few seconds and then I shall be at your side.”

  “No,” Sabrina whispered. “It should be me.”

  “Here, Captain,” Valeria said as she tossed her pistol to Buckle.

  “Thank you,” Buckle replied and turned to Sabrina. “You and Penny see to it that the Keeper gets to Insulae Five and sees a man named Seneca. See to it.”

  “Damn it all to hell,” Sabrina groaned.

  “Piece of cake,” Buckle said with a smile.

  Sabrina looked at him, her green eyes glowing in the boil-lit cabin. “I’ll find Elizabeth. I shall.”

  Buckle smiled. He felt good about that.

  “Before I go,” Welly said, moving with purpose in the tight space, taking Sabrina’s right hand and kissing it. “Farewell, beloved Lieutenant.”

  “Not nearly good enough,” Sabrina whispered quickly. She lifted Welly’s chin and kissed him on the lips.

  Welly glowed. “Now I am ready to die,” he said.

  “And for you, Romulus,” Sabrina said. She leaned in and kissed him, her lips soft and warm, and her touch gave him resolve, strength, and sadness. She leaned back and gazed at him, her eyes brimming with tears. “Piece of cake.”

  “Piece of cake,” Buckle replied.

  “Hurry, damn it!” Valeria said.

  Buckle leaned against the hatch, trying to listen over the pounding of his heart. All he heard was the gurgle of the sea and the creak of what was probably the damaged docking bay clamp scraping in its housing as it moved with the ebb of the currents. The sounds of fighting inside the passageway were gone.

  “Open the hatch!” Buckle ordered. So this was it, he thought, his head lowered, his right hand clamped around the grip of his saber, his left hand clenching the pistol. He couldn’t imagine surviving this one. But it was a good way to go. “And close it behind us as fast as you possibly can.”

  “Your sacrifice shall be remembered, Captain,” Cicero said.

  Buckle nodded. He wanted to punch Cicero in the mouth.

  Cicero wound the wheel and flipped the locking lever.

  The hatch swung open into darkness. The mist of a dozen jetting leaks filled the airlock, obscuring what Buckle knew was waiting a few yards beyond. Advancing with his sword and pistol, Buckle leaned into the hatchway and coiled for a charge. Still, he could see next to nothing. Weak sunlight obliquely filtered in from the undulating surface above and imparted a shivering blue-green light to the passageway. With the swirl of the mist it all had a haunting, otherworldly feel, an endless depth, like a place that existed both in the reality and in the other. Aether light occasionally spluttered from the cracked overhead tubes, the liquid spilling down here and there in sparkling cascades.

  Then Buckle saw them, a dark irregular mass in the throat of the passageway, stepping over the bodies of Horatus and his men as they advanced, weapons glinting in the wobbling sea-light. The aether flashes revealed shadowed faces, silver buttons and blades.

  “Now!” Buckle ordered, but as Welly plunged out past him he found himself anchored to the deck of the pod. Penny Dreadful had locked onto his thigh with her small, powerful arms, pinning his leg as effectively as if it were nailed down.

  “You cannot go!” Penny Dreadful shrieked, her voice indistinguishable from that of an anguished human child.

  “Penny!” Buckle howled, seeing Welly charging by himself. “Release my leg, now!”

  “No!” Penny wailed.

  Sabrina jumped through the hatch, snatching Valeria’s pistol out of Buckle’s hand as she passed.

  “Sabrina!” Buckle screamed. “Get back!”

  “Close the hatch!” Sabrina shouted. The roar of the pistol slammed Buckle’s ears, its blinding flash biting his eyes, and Sabrina vanished through its billowing black cloud.

  “Your bravery will be remembered, Lieutenant!” Cicero yelled, throwing his weight against the hatch.

  “No!” Buckle yelled, kicking at Penny, clawing at Cicero’s sleeve.

  “Captain!” Cicero roared, fighting to free his arm from Buckle’s grasp. “Please!”

  “Close the hatch or we all drown!” Valeria shouted. “When the switch is thrown the airlock floods! Close the hatch!”

  “Sabrina!” Buckle screamed. He hauled Penny off of his leg but it was too late. He released Cicero and staggered against a seat as the Keeper closed the hatch and spun the locking wheel.

  “Hatch sealed,” Cicero announced, already on his way back to the bow.

  Buckle heard a loud bump of metal on metal from the stern and the pod slid forward, buoyant, loose, free, into the ocean.

  “We have disengaged,” Valeria said.

  Buckle clutched the seats beside him; he felt weightless, dizzy, as the pod ascended and spun around.

  “Engaging aether engines,” Valeria said as Cicero slipped into the seat beside her. The pod interior hummed to life with a quiet, purring vibration. Electricity. Valeria’s instrument panel tubes lit up with the soft glow of the luminiferous aether. “Hang on.”

  The deck tilted as Valeria accelerated and banked hard to starboard. Buckle scrambled to a starboard porthole and peered down. There, looking up through one of the oblong window ports in the docking bay, her face pale as a ghost behind the glass, was Sabrina. She pressed her hand against the inside of the window and disappeared, t
urning away to meet her fate.

  “Sabrina!” Buckle shouted, clutching the back of the seat. The escape pod veered again, descending down and away from the Atlantean dome, leaving behind its towering mountain of dark, dead glass. The electric boat would have amazed Buckle had he not been shocked numb. It was as if his heart had been ripped from his body for a second time. He had lost another sister to the Founders.

  And his soul was unsure if it could stand it.

  XLVI

  SHUBA

  Her hand pressed against the cold glass, the clang of the docking bay clamp disengaging still ringing in her ears, Sabrina stared up through the rippling surface of the sea window. The Atlantean escape pod, gold and white and beautiful, rose away. She was glad they had escaped. But it hurt when she glimpsed Buckle looking down at her, his face terribly stricken, and she felt guilty at having caused him so much pain.

  Sabrina did not regret acting without thinking, acting in Buckle’s defense, but she hated the idea of dying before exacting her revenge, the old revenge which had lived with her for so many years. It would be an itch she could never scratch. It would itch in her dead bones for eternity.

  She turned to face the passageway, balancing the weight of her saber in her hand. It would have been good to have her knife in her free hand but that had been left behind in the Vicar’s skull. So, take as much blood as one can now, for now is all that is left.

  She lowered her head, listening to the breathing from the wall of enemies inching towards her in the dark, closing panther-like, their black and navy blue Founders uniforms lit up by sputtering bursts of the aether cascading from the tubes overhead, the crackling illumination shimmering across their forest of poised blades.

  She raised her head and saw them lift their boots as they advanced, stepping over the lifeless body of Ensign Wellington Bratt.

  Sabrina raised her sword. Welly had fought and died well. His charge and her pistol blast had put the enemy on their heels, if only for a moment, but long enough for her to throw the emergency release switches for the escape pod. It surprised her how calm she was, how at ease she was. She did have great affection for Welly but she hadn’t the time to miss him—and she would be seeing him again very soon, for wherever he was she was sure to follow. She would, however, inflict as much damage as possible before the deal was sealed. She took a deep breath and smelled seawater and ambergris.