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

by Richard Ellis Preston Jr.

  “Nothing is ever the way it was supposed to be, Romulus,” Pluteus replied. Then he was lost in his thousand-yard stare again.

  A tiny hitch vibrated in the metal beneath Buckle’s boots. He raised an eyebrow in alarm. The Pneumatic Zeppelin was slowing down.

  In the next moment there was a commotion at the ladder above; Pluteus’s infantry sergeant, a weathered pugilist named Scully, ducked his head down the hatch. “Airbanger—you’ve got a hole in yer gasbag!”

  A hole in the bag. A hole in the bag meant the possibility of a breached hydrogen cell. Loose hydrogen inside a zeppelin was an impending catastrophe.

  Buckle, with Kellie bounding at his heels, shot up out of the hatch so fast that Sergeant Scully had to jump aside.

  “AIRBANGER—YOU’VE GOT A HOLE IN YER GASBAG!”

  EVEN IF THE HYDROGEN CELL had not been compromised, a hole in the skin envelope of a zeppelin was never a good thing. Immediate repair of any significant breach was a necessity. At high speed—and the Pneumatic Zeppelin was running at all ahead full—the constant battering of the wind would snatch at the loose skin and make the hole larger and larger. The airship had a rigid iron superstructure set in flex joints that made it supple as a whole, but a current of air roaring like a locomotive into the interior would place horrific stresses upon the gigantic gas-cell balloons and the elements that secured them. Airships taking massive damage to their outer-skin envelopes had been known to tear themselves apart internally, even in moderate winds.

  Max, sporting both pistol and sword at her belt, hurried in from the umbilical hatch and joined Buckle as he strode toward the circular staircase. Pluteus’s Ballblasters eyed “Balthazar’s zebe” with suspicious leers, as they always did.

  “Where’s the rip?” Buckle demanded.

  “Topside, over cell thirteen in compartment seven,” Max said. She did not look worried. She rarely ever looked worried.

  “From above?”

  “It would appear so, Captain. The breach is reported to be sizable. Lieutenant Serafim gave the order to reduce speed. Skinners have initiated repairs.”

  Buckle started up the circular staircase to the main deck with Max at his flank, their boots ringing on the cast iron steps. The hot stink of smoke, steam, and lubricant oil hit them as they rose into the engine room.

  “Do we have a hydrogen breach?” Buckle asked.

  “Damage assessment is ongoing,” Max replied. “No reports of cell compromises yet.”

  “Well, we shall know soon, one way or the other,” Buckle said as they emerged inside the cavernous envelope, which housed the twelve-story-high hydrogen cells and steambags, all floating like monstrous gray elephants, each secured in a colossal web of girders, ladders, catwalks, wires, ropes, tubes, climbing shafts, ventilation shafts, and pipes. High above, the outer skin rippled.

  A punctured hydrogen cell would flood the zeppelin, a huge bottle containing furnaces, boilers, steam engines, and kerosene lanterns, with explosive gas. The Pneumatic Zeppelin was designed with twenty-eight gasbag cells, set in horizontal pairs in fifteen compartments across the ship’s main axis. Normally, about one-tenth of the cells were filled with superheated air to supplement lift—the much-preferred hydrogen was expensive and scarce—and when a cell contained hot air it was referred to as a steambag. The massive cell balloons were constructed from overlapping sheets of goldbeater’s skin, which was made from the intestines of cows. The Pneumatic Zeppelin had required 825,000 sheets of goldbeater’s skin for her gasbags.

  That was a dang lot of cows.

  Buckle, Max, and Kellie strode past the six gigantic boilers, which looked like black-steel locomotives perched on both sides of the aisle. The firebox furnaces—all except number two—glowed yellow and roared. The pressurized boilers gurgled in an eardrum-pummeling cacophony, fed fuel heartily by the stokers, the “sky dogs,” stripped to the waist, their muscles shining under the perspiration that flowed in runnels down skin blackened by coal dust and fire.

  Buckle hurried through the blast doors at the main valve-switching station and leapt up the forward staircase, moving so fast that Kellie, and even Max, with her long legs, had to strive to keep up with him. He led them up to the Hydro deck where the catwalk, lined with hydrogen tanks, heaved between the gray flanks of the massive gas cells. The ship’s belligerent goat, Victoria, was tethered to a chattertube pipe outside the ship’s zoo, where the chickens clucked, the pigeon coops stank, and fireflies swirled behind glass; she barely gave any of them a second glance as they passed her in their rush to the next companionway, her split-pupilled eyes looking bored as she chewing something that she always chewed, even if there was apparently nothing there to chew.

  Buckle’s lungs started to labor as he ascended to the Axial deck, the main catwalk that ran down the centerline of the airship from the nose to stern, but he kept up his speed, launching his legs up the small staircase, which carried him up to the Castle deck and the upper reaches of compartment seven.

  Buckle glanced up in an attempt to catch a glimpse of any damage to gasbag number thirteen overhead. It always felt like he was in the bottom of a well whenever he looked up into the hydrogen-cell city from below: it was a narrow view between the looming, gray hydrogen cells and the copper blast walls on the sides opposite. Although he still could not view the hole directly because it was above the gasbag, he could see the kaleidoscopic effects of the muted sunlight pouring through the hole and bouncing around in the interior, the light fluttering as the torn fabric skin flapped sharply against a whistle of twisting wind.

  Then Buckle saw Ivan peering down between the bags, grimacing as he patted the shaft of a primitive harpoon, its point sunk into a wooden support beam.

  “Hydrogen?” Buckle shouted.

  Ivan shook his head. “Nope. Not a trace. How the hell did those yellow-fingered Scavs get their hands on a shooter as big as this, anyway?”

  Buckle eyed the harpoon—it was big, but ramshackle, the bole poorly smoothed, and cut from uneven wood, the impressive iron point ill-fitting at the base, as if it had been designed to fit on something else. Judging from the angle of the harpoon in its resting place, it appeared to have plunged down on the Pneumatic Zeppelin from above. Probably fired from a massive crossbow of some sort, positioned atop a hill, Buckle decided, its trajectory arcing high in the sky before it came down on the vulnerable zeppelin. Either way, it was a lucky shot for a Scavenger’s near-useless equipment. But it was also a lucky shot for the Pneumatic Zeppelin: yes, the harpoon had damaged the envelope skin, but that was eminently repairable; the real treasure, the fragile cell number thirteen and its exorbitantly-priced, explosive hydrogen, had been spared any damage at all, and that was real luck.

  “Precious little souvenir, eh?” Buckle shouted back to Max.

  “Not the way I would describe it,” Max answered.

  Buckle’s boots clanged on the catwalk as he raced to the small set of stairs leading up to the top Eagle deck. Deck four was called the Castle deck because when all of the blast-shield portals were open along its length—as they were now—it resembled the grand hall of a castle, lined with the waists of the rubber stockings that sheathed the gas cells in towering curtains of mottled gray. The stocking skins were laced with complex mechanical latticeworks that resembled a million metal spiders joined together at the legs, glittering as they quivered at high tension. And the curving arches of rigging, backstays, and piping high overhead under the Eagle deck catwalk gave the ceiling a vaulted look, as architecturally pleasing as the roof of a church.

  It only took a few more moments for Buckle, Max, and the dog to climb up the cast iron stairwell to reach the Eagle deck at the top of compartment seven, a narrow catwalk running just beneath the roof of the Pneumatic Zeppelin’s envelope. Here, one could almost reach up and touch the underside of the fabric skin rippling along the airship’s back, and if one took a look down over the rail of the catwalk, one was rewarded with a vertigo-inducing view of the vertical gas-cell city, w
hich plunged straight down to the keel corridor one hundred and forty feet below.

  Hit by a torrent of fresh, freezing air, Buckle lowered his goggles and focused his eyes on the hole in the skin just above the catwalk over cell thirteen: it was an irregular gash about four feet in diameter, with a center of slate-gray sky. Its edges of ragged fabric lashed about like an enraged octopus. The harpoon itself had probably created a much smaller puncture, but the force of the passing air—the sound of it was deafening—had already greatly increased the size of the breach. Ivan and the chief skinner, Marian Boyd, were already working underneath the hole. Two more skinners, Rudyard Tuck and Amanda Ambrose—both of diminutive size, which was handy in their line of work—hunched low, clutching clockwork hydrogen meters with their chemical sticks, and puttering in repair boxes flipped open at their knees, handing up nine-inch needles, dense hemp thread, and rolls of fabric. Both Ivan and Boyd wore safety goggles and thick leather gloves as they fought to grasp the fluttering shreds of fabric, their hands constantly jerking back, stung despite the padded leather. The left lens of Ivan’s goggles was cracked.

  In-flight skin repair on a zeppelin running full speed was no easy business.

  “This one is a real stinker, Cap’n!” Ivan shouted, finally managing to pin down the biggest flap of loose canvas amidst the cataract of air. “We should slow down!”

  “No chance!” Buckle replied, peering up at the hole.

  The interior repair was mere damage control: pinning down the ripped fringes of the breach so they would not further aggravate the opening. But somebody had to go outside and stitch a patch over the leading edge of the hole so the wind could not get underneath it, pluck it up, and continue to tear the envelope apart.

  And that somebody was going to be Buckle.

  “Tuck! Gear me up!” Buckle ordered.

  Tuck pulled a heavy safety harness out of a chest and swung it onto Buckle’s back, assisting him as he slipped his arms and legs through the straps.

  “Captain, sir,” Boyd, already suited up in her safety harness and skinwalking boots, yelled. “With all due respect: I volunteer. It is my job, Captain.”

  “Captain’s prerogative, Miss Boyd,” Buckle said. Skinwalking was a part of the skinners’ pedigree, he knew, but if he could take a crew member’s place in a perilous situation, he intended to do so without hesitation.

  Tuck clicked Buckle’s harness clasps together across his chest, checking and double-checking them, then handed him a white pith helmet with goggles, Havelock flap, and red puggaree, all fur-lined—the traditional Crankshaft headgear—and took his elegant topper for safekeeping.

  Boyd shook her head with dismay. “It is my responsibility, sir. You always go out. It is not correct.” She shot a look at Max. “Am I mistaken, Lieutenant Max?”

  “I disapprove of his risk taking, but the captain does not answer to me. You are on your own if you wish to argue with him,” Max shouted. Her black eyes flickered pink inside her goggles, the Martian color of frustration; Martians had eyes like mood rings.

  Buckle felt the hollow thump of the heavy parachute cylinder hit his back as Tuck snapped it into place. Ambrose finished securing a special harness and leather helmet on Kellie, who sat with great anticipation, her brown eyes shining through the goggles.

  Buckle pulled his goggles down over his eyes and winked at the dog. “You ready, girl?”

  Kellie barked.

  “I am ready to assist, Captain!” Boyd shouted from his shoulder, her voice sharp with a snap of bitterness.

  Tuck handed Max a loaded blackbang musket, and she checked the primer.

  “At least it is directly on top,” Max shouted. “You will not have to rappel, or hook up to the jackline.”

  “See! Lucky!” Buckle said to Max. “Thirteen is my lucky number!”

  Ambrose snapped safety lines onto the harness-belt hooks of Buckle, Boyd, and Kellie. The leather-wrapped cables were cumbersome, as were the bulky bronze canisters containing their silk parachutes, but eminently necessary.

  “A ten-foot square should do the trick!” Boyd yelled, folding a large fabric patch into the tool pocket on the chest of her harness. Her small eyes looked even smaller inside her thick safety goggles, but her full lips, freshened by the brisk air, looked bright red.

  “Keep your head up, Cap’n!” Ivan said.

  “Aye!” Buckle replied, lifting Kellie into his arms.

  Ambrose pushed a stepladder under the flapping hole. A depthless void of gray sky gaped above, pale as death.

  KELLIE OF KELLS

  THE SENSATION OF EMERGING FROM a hole on the top of a flying airship was something that Buckle had experienced many times before, but that made the new trial no less daunting. Pushing up from the narrow confines of the Eagle deck into the mind-blowing vastness of the sky would put the whackwillies on anyone’s head for a moment or two. Fear was a thing Buckle had taught himself to swallow and never regurgitate. But it did take a specific moment to swallow it. And in that moment he held still on all fours, his gloved hands clutching a sea of canvas that surged and rippled under his knees as if he rode the back of some colossal whale. The empty gray sky was blinding, despite his polarized goggles. The freezing wind sucked at every inch of him, biting at his cheeks, threatening to snatch him, snap his safety line, and hurl him into oblivion.

  And then the moment was over.

  All was familiar. He was firmly planted on the back of his great airship. The heavily doped canvas skin fluttered against the long spineboard. The grappling cannons and pepper guns, bundled in oilskin wrappings, stood erect and unbending in the gale.

  Buckle clambered around the breach so that the wind was at his back. The howling air buffeted him, but could not penetrate his heavy leather coat and the fur-lined helmet flap covering his neck. He would have the hole stitched up in no time.

  And the view was fabulous. Sabrina, heading due south now, had lifted the airship to nearly three thousand feet altitude to clear the rolling white crests of the small Santa Monica Mountains. Under the stern of the Pneumatic Zeppelin receded the broad plain of the San Fernando Valley and the shadow of the San Gabriel Mountains to the north. To his left, the Big Green Soup twinkled dark blue under a distant haze. In every direction he could see the purplish Martian obelisks, dropped on the day of The Storming, looming over the landscape: the Catalina obelisk in the channel to the south, the Piru obelisk in the mountains to the northwest, and the Redlands obelisk in the haze to the east, the tops of their monstrous columns soaring higher than the Pneumatic Zeppelin was designed to fly.

  Ivan popped up from the hole with Kellie in his arms, pressing Buckle’s safety line to one side to make sure it did not foul. He set the dog down facing Buckle and she crouched low, the slipstream pressing her fur pancake flat. She released a happy yip, tail valiantly trying to wag.

  Buckle patted the top of Kellie’s flying helmet. The dog was a veteran of such adventures at the ripe old age of three, and as dauntless as her master. But the mascot was not on top of the airship to provide companionship—she was there to sound a warning if tanglers approached. Dogs hated the flying beasties, the massive former pets of the Martian invaders: a mad scientist’s fusion of pterodactyl, vulture, and cassowary, which could zip through the earth’s atmosphere like bullets. Tanglers attacked in a crash dive from a high altitude—a deadly tactic when a man was exposed outside a moving zeppelin. The nefarious tanglers possessed unearthly animal smarts and regularly shadowed airships at a distance, patiently waiting for the opportunity to steal a meal.

  Kellie was positioned to watch the sky at Buckle’s back.

  Tanglers always struck from behind.

  Marian Boyd climbed up onto the roof and clamped down at Buckle’s left shoulder. She was so small that Buckle half expected the wind to snatch her up and sail her like a kite at the end of her safety line. She opened the repair satchel attached to the chest of her safety harness and handed Buckle an envelope needle, a nine-inch, razor-tipped awl de
signed to punch through the dope-stiffened fabric of the airship skin. The needle was already threaded with heavy hemp rope. Buckle attached the needle’s leather strap to his wrist so the wind could not yank it away from him.

  Max rose up in the hole gripping the blackbang musket—packing a nice little punch in the arse for any irritating tangler.

  “Let’s get cracking!” Buckle shouted at Boyd, feeling his bravado kick into gear. Having removed the skin patch from her harness satchel, Boyd battled the torrent of air as she pressed it down on the undamaged fabric at the leading edge of the breach. Buckle punched the needle through both the patch and the taut skin beneath, yanking the thick hemp thread through and reaching under to draw the needle up again. Each stitch could be no more than three inches apart. He punched the needle through for a second stitch and then a third and a fourth.

  Kellie whimpered at Max, who was blocking her view, and pulled herself forward so her paws hung over the opening, cocking her head up at the sky.

  Buckle grinned at Kellie as he stitched. When he had found her, more a starved ball of fur than a lost puppy, her appearance in the house had not thrilled Balthazar, who threatened to let the mongrel sort-of-terrier go. But Balthazar’s bluster was often ineffective when it came to his children; nine youngsters—one born by natural process to Calypso, the other eight adopted from far and wide—raised to be independent and headstrong, who had no qualms about clashing with the will of their father.

  Balthazar and Calypso were the only parents Buckle and his sister Elizabeth had ever really known. Their real parents had been killed when Buckle was six years old, and his treasured memories of them were fragmented and cloudy.

  Buckle, fifteen years old at the time, claimed the lost dog as his ship’s mascot, even though Buckle was only an apprentice navigator and lacked an airship of his own. There was nothing Balthazar could do. Every captain—or future captain, Buckle argued—was allowed a mascot. Balthazar’s dog, a bulldog named Agamemnon, had the run of Balthazar’s zeppelin, the flagship Khartoum. It was even rumored that Balthazar fed Agamemnon buttered bread on occasion, although he would never admit to spoiling his beloved canine in such a fashion.